Anno Domini
by Alfsigesey
Summary: After taking a bullet in the head, Beth wakes up. It's the morning that Rick carried his dying son in his arms to her family farm. With her memories of the next two years fully intact, she goes about trying and set things right. But maybe getting Daryl Dixon to come around just takes time, maybe there's nothing she can do to save him, or herself. (Bethyl, timeline split from S2 on)
1. Chapter I - End of Days

Out of sight, Beth braces herself for what comes next.

 _Maybe it will be good._

They can't hear her, because they're talking to each other. Can't smell her, because they're already sick on the smell of a dying boy's blood and sweat.

"If he reacts the same as before, I'll sever an artery and he'll be dead in minutes." Her father speaks slowly, though he must know that every moment is vital. It's just as important that Rick understand. Really, understand. Carl is dying. "To even try this, I have to put him under. But if I do, he won't be able to breathe on his own. Same bad results."

"What'll it take?" Rick couldn't quite clean all the red off his face and out of his hairline. She remembers that about him. Remembers true desperation in his voice.

"You need a respirator." Otis picks up on what Hershel is saying, what he's implying needs to happen, he steps forward, closing a little bit of the space in the living room, already volunteering himself in his mind. "What else?"

"The tube that goes with it, extra surgical supplies, drapes, sutures." Hershel doesn't spare them. There's that precious time to think about.

"If you had all that, you could save him?" Rick is on the edge.

"If I had all that, I could try." Hershel wants to promise more, but her daddy is no kind of liar.

"Nearest hospital went up in flames a month ago." Otis just needs to look at Hershel to know what the next step is. "The high school."

"That's what I was thinkin'. They set up a FEMA shelter there. They would have everything we need." _Does daddy know what he's asking?_

"Place was overrun last time I saw it. You couldn't get near it—maybe it's better now." Otis always was too optimistic.

"I said, leave the rest to me." She'd almost forgotten everything about Shane, but hearing his voice again brings with it a whole gush of memories. "Is it too late to take that back?"

"I hate you goin' alone."

 _Oh Rick, you really mean that, don't you?_ Beth draws in a lungful of air and clutches the doorframe, pulling herself into view, just under the archway and steps inside the living room.

"Come on." Shane tries to brush off Rick's concern. He hasn't seen Beth yet, but Maggie's looking up with stunned eyes and a dropped jaw.

Shane says, "Doc, why don't you do me a list, draw me a map—" and stops dead. They all stand like statues, finally seeing her.

From the crown of her head, to the toes of her cowboy boots, Beth Greene is smeared with walker gore. Flakey, congealed blood is under her fingernails, stuck in dangling chunks of her hair, ground into her clothing and painting her skin. Some of it is still warm and sticky.

No one speaks, even to cuss.

Beth drops Shawn's old gym-bag on the ground; inside the bag is a respirator, the tube that goes with it, drapes, sutures and everything else she could carry from inside the FEMA shelter outside her old high school.

* * *

"I get it now." _Aim for the jugular._ Even as she thinks it, she feels her hand slip. Too much sweat. Too little time. She's only ever killed by going for the head. Right between the eyes, with a bullet or a blade or broken glass, that's how it's done. _Shit._ _THE SHOULDER?_ She barely registers how far her hand fell, how badly her nerves shook her in that crucial moment, barely notices that Dawn had drawn her gun and then it's just loud and black and her head falls back.

It's over so fast. It starts so fast.

* * *

Beth wakes up.

She blinks her eyes open, vision blurry with light, body soft and warm. Her hair is a halo of gold around the white pillow. Sitting up immediately, it takes several shallow, tense breaths before she accepts what is before her eyes. Her room. Her own room, back _home_.

Throwing the covers back, her whole body feels flushed. Her sore ankle is gone, and in its place is a strong one. Her legs are soft and pale, free from the scratches, scrapes and scars that she's grown so used to. She climbs out of bed, feet trembling against the floor. _I'm dead. This is heaven._ Gun blast still rings through her head, heart still pounds. _The shoulder?!_ Who knew you'd still have regrets in heaven. But she does. She regrets. They were right there. The door was right there.

She hadn't even gotten to speak to Daryl.

That thought freezes her in place. Until, she realizes that those velvety soft murmurs she hears through the floorboards belong to her father. Her father who she last saw as he was on his knees, being murdered by a psychopath with a stolen sword. " _Daddy_ , DAD!" bolting out the door, she hits the railing of the staircase hard, immediately bruising her hip bone, before she tumbles down the staircase.

"Bethy? Everything alright, oof!" He meets her in the doorway of the kitchen, taken aback, even before she flies into his chest and pushes him back a full three feet until he hits the table. He nearly chuckles, but he's too concerned to make laughter last, "What's wrong?"

Her eyes are too wet to see and mostly buried in his shirt, but she can feel he's standing upright and strong. "You got both legs."

With a little necessary force he pushes her back, pressing the back of his hand against her forehead and looking into her eyes. She swallows and blinks, and as she looks deep into his eyes she realizes she was wrong about something. He's confused. "What are you saying? You're shaking, Bethy, when was the last time you ate something?"

"You awake, finally?" Maggie's voice interrupts them as she stomps into the kitchen, mud already on her boots, a few fluffs from chicken feathers clinging to the cuffs of her jeans.

First comes a rush of sadness. She'd hoped Maggie was alive out there somewhere. She starts to pull away from her dad, intent on, once again, pulling Maggie into her arms, but stops short.

It hits her, all at once. There's no sign, no sudden flash of light, there's just something about the scene of her father, being doctor daddy and concerned in their kitchen that smells so perfectly like lemon, and the foreboding sky outside, and the way the barn looms at Maggie's rounded back. There's a burden in that barn. There's something shadowy in the corner of all their eyes. They can't look at it straight on, even when it's right in front of them.

"C'mon, get dressed," Maggie doesn't seem excited to see her either. "Patricia and Jimmy need help with the peaches, and Otis just went hunting—"

Hershel interrupts Maggie with a shake of his head, "I don't think she's well, Maggie, can you help them?"

Maggie sighs heavily, but manages not to roll her eyes as she agrees with a subtle nod. She turns on her heel and leaves.

Beth is still stranded and wordless in the kitchen, looking back and forth between them. Slowly, she sits down. Not even in a chair, just on the ground.

"Beth?" Her father takes a hold of her wrists, stooping down. "How do you feel? Faint?"

"Yeah," she answers vaguely. "I just… I had a strange dream. Got up too quick." She speaks in a toneless, slow voice.

 _I remember this day._ Not the details, but the big picture.

Her father pours her a glass of orange juice, and hands it too her, "Might just be low blood sugar."

She wants to just stare at them, wants to bask in their presence. They are already looking at her like she's crazy. "Maybe, I oughta go back to bed. Just for a little while."

"I think that's a good idea. Go lie down. I'll come check on you in a bit." He helps her stand up, takes the empty glass from her after she downs it.

Much slower than she arrived, Beth retreats back to her room, glancing back over her shoulder to see his face. Just as she remembers him.

Otis went hunting. Maggie fed the _walkers_ in the barn. Beth helped Jimmy and Patricia pick peaches and fix the fence. They made it back to the house for lunch and then there was shouting in the distance. A man running across their property with a dying boy in his arms. His son.

She gets back in bed, but doesn't lie down. Her mouth is dry, suddenly, in spite of the citrus bite of orange juice still lingering on her tongue. She closes her eyes tight, then reopens them. It's all still the same.

Reading about a couple of Near Death Experiences, she knows that sometimes you see things that happened in your life, before you die. But this is different, and wrong, and too late. It just keeps going, every second an eternity of the past. Her mother is already gone. She should have gone back far enough to see her. She's not picking peaches with Patricia and Jimmy. Maggie took her place.

It's different.

It's the past.

 _Otis ain't even shot Carl yet._ Her stomach drops as she realizes that. How long ago did he leave? She looks at the clock on the wall, a second hand pulling slowly towards the ten. She doesn't even know where he went. Probably can't stop it from happening. Carl will get shot. Then, Shane and Otis will go to the high school to get the respirator so that Carl can survive his surgery, and Otis will die.

Before she even realizes what she's doing, Beth is tugging her jeans on, and her cowboy boots and throwing her hair up in a ponytail. _Don't know what's happening. Don't know what this is. But if I can fix it, I will._

They're not losing Otis.

She's almost ready to go when she realizes she'll need weapons. Her daddy doesn't like guns much, but they still have them. Otis mostly uses hunting rifles, but she's sure there's a shotgun and at least one revolver in his stash as well. She probably can't get to any of that without his keys.

She finds her brother's old gym-bag, tries not to think about what she might've done to save _him_ and instead recites a short plan under her breath. "Get a weapon, start a fire, grab what you need, drive back, maybe before they even notice you're gone," if she was very slick, she could manage it. "Daddy will just be surprised that he's got a respirator after all!" she adds brightly.

 _This can work._

Beth only snuck out of the house a couple of times in her whole life, and typically for the very innocent and boring reason of wanting to see the stars. Maggie is better at this kind of thing. Maggie wouldn't be silly enough to leave a note, but that's exactly what Beth does, because the last thing she needs is for them to worry about her while she's off doing what needs to get done.

 _Be back soon._ She leaves the note on her pillow. Maybe they won't notice the missing car right away. Maybe her dad won't come check on her until lunch—until he's got something more pressing to worry about, like a dying little boy named Carl. Maybe she can buy herself enough time.

Her dad is outside, heading to the stables. She watches him until she's sure that's where he's going, then plucks Maggie's car keys from where they dangle enticingly on the hook. Before she heads out, Beth makes a side-trip to the shed out back for an axe.

She's well aware that two grown men went to do this job last time, and one of them lost his life. That's not happening today. She fires the car engine to life, scared, but more sure of her ability to do this than theirs.

Otis and Shane never had a chance. They didn't know what they were doing yet, and that was why they both met their end so quick. They didn't know, any better than a sixteen year old Beth did, way back when the world first ended. The only difference between them was that Beth knew she needed help. She knew she would die without someone watching her back. She knew she could be dead any second, even if someone was watching her back.

Otis and Shane thought they could survive this.

Otis and Shane didn't even know what _this_ was yet.

* * *

 **We're just getting started and I'm expecting that average chapter length will be longer than this... these first two chapters are more of an introduction to the story and the setting. Bethyl to come:)**

 **Regina Spektor - The Call**


	2. Chapter II - Let Your Light So Shine

Fire attracts them. Maybe they can feel it. Or maybe they can see it, or smell the burning. Something about it draws them in like moths, they move more quickly to get to it, to let it lick up their graceless limbs and cook the rotting flesh. It makes them excited, almost as frenzied as when they feed.

During the eight months they were on the road, Beth was quiet. She just watched. _I'm the weakest. Carl is younger than me. Lori's carrying a baby, and I'm still the weak one. Out of everyone in this group, I'm the one they could afford to lose._

Bitter thoughts ran through her head on a nightly basis. Like deep cuts, the words coursed through her. It was always worse when there wasn't quite enough food to go around. When there was one less blanket. Sometimes, she just felt like this group would be better off if they didn't have to look out for her. If they didn't have the burden of her.

Her sister wouldn't listen. She would just get mad, until Beth stopped saying anything out of turn. She could see it in Maggie's eyes. She was afraid Beth would go dark again and try to end it. She never came close. She never went that deep into despair again. She'd already decided she would try. There was everything left to lose, but she would see how long she could last.

Everyone around her stepped up.

They were so strong.

She tried her hardest, until, even as the least of them, she was strong. A survivor. Beth had ideas, sometimes. Smart ideas, even, but she didn't voice them. Rick was in charge and his ideas kept them alive. Her ideas were untested. She was strong, but she wasn't confident.

It wasn't until she was alone with Daryl that she felt alright to try out a couple of her ideas.

 _Set fire to something I don't care about, in the opposite direction of where I'm going, and distract the walkers._ It had cleared their way when she and Daryl decided to take off in the middle of the night and leave their shelter.

Something she doesn't care about happens to be post office just around the corner from the high school. She takes flares from an abandoned police car and fuel from the tank and sets the building ablaze.

Within ten minutes the area around the FEMA shelter is deserted.

On quick feet, she scurries to the shelter. It's dark inside, but the little flashlight on Maggie's keychain is surprisingly bright. Combing through the life-saving objects on the shelves, she finds what Carl will need first, then just starts grabbing everything that looks useful. Survivors can never have enough medical supplies. You never know when someone will break an ankle, or get bit and have to have an emergency amputation, or get sick, or get _shot_ —

She jostles a roll of gauze from the shelf and it tumbles to the floor. For a moment she's still, listening to the crackle of the fire in the distance. There's not another sound. She's alone. She's alright. But there's gun blast pounding through her head.

 _Why?_

Beth's got the shakes again, but she doesn't have the time to let it run its course. She throws the gauze into the bag, along with the last three tubes of bacitracin and tells herself silently that it's time to go.

The fire is working. The area around the FEMA shelter is still devoid of walkers. Maggie's car is fifty yards away. She hauls Shawn's gym-bag over her arm and runs. Forty yards, thirty yards.

At twenty, it all unravels. She hears the rumble of an engine over the cracking, laughing fire. A truck engine.

Stumbling, she dives towards the nearest cluster of cars, hiding on instinct. Walkers she can deal with, but the _living_? No one's supposed to be here but Rick and his people. They didn't run into anyone else, not for a while, though there was another group camped nearby. She scoots back as far a she can between two burnt-out cars, clutching the gym-bag close. To her horror, the engine sounds like it's approaching, the truck is slowing down. The engine shuts off. Dammit. They're here. They came here, with purpose.

But that isn't her daddy's truck. It's got the heavy, dark sound of a new engine. She's well hidden enough, underneath the blackened carriage of the burned car between her and the road, she catches a glimpse of a new Chevy and a pair of big black cowboy boots stepping down from the passenger side. On the other side of the car, an even bigger pair of combat boots. They're walking right towards the FEMA shelter and then she realizes what happened.

They were keeping an eye on this place. They wanted the goods too, but there were too many walkers. They must have noticed the fire, and then they noticed that the parking lot was empty, so they rushed over.

 _There was another group of people, close enough that they could check out a location for possible supplies only five miles from the farm._ The thought chills her, because even if they didn't run into them last time, she's changed things.

 _I have an advantage, knowing what's going to happen next, but when I change something—it can change everything. Advantage gone._

Two large men with unkempt hair and carelessly held shotguns make their way towards the shelter. Beth scoots back even further, hears a snarl and notices broken fingernails attached to a rooting hand under the car. It's all melted and half welded into the underside of the car at her back, but there's a walker, still wriggling behind her. The fire didn't quite cook its brains. It's not loud enough to attract attention, but she starts to feel uneasy as it twitches towards her and the bag.

The men are talking. She's not close enough to hear, and to hide well, she can't really risk look at them straight on either, but she watches low, keeps an eye on their boots until they disappear inside the shelter. They aren't in there long. They come out, brisk and loud.

One of them gives a hoot as he runs to the truck then the sound of a gunshot rings through the street, echoing off the ruins of her old high school. He shouts "HEY LAME BRAINS!" in the direction of the post office. His companion laughs. They're both safely back at their truck. No trouble for them as they fire the engine up again and burn rubber with a squeal. They tear off down the road and Beth waits as long as she absolutely has to, to be sure they won't see her.

It's too late. She scrambles out from behind the car, to the sight of a half dozen burning walkers ambling in the direction that the truck went, behind them, the rest of the herd lags. But now, they can smell her, hear her. They're already turning towards her.

Her escape paths have been eliminated. She can either go inside the shelter again, and hope it holds… or she can try the school. It's big. It's solid. It's got more possibilities. She knows it well.

Inside the school, she shuts the outer fence, but knows that it won't last. Which classrooms had windows that opened? Which bathrooms? She thinks the girl's room on the second floor, but she doesn't like the idea of that drop. The science lab has got to have windows that open, it's probably mandatory for a room where they might be mixing potentially hazardous chemicals.

Beth can hear the growling and snarling and the cackling of the flames on their undead skin, even though she's a hallway away, at least. She listens to her breathing, feels her muscles keen and remembers, exasperated that she's not as used to this. At least, her _body_ isn't.

This is her sixteen year old legs, strong from horseback riding, strong from walking and running when she felt like it. Not yet used to running for her life.

They'll learn.

Even though there's a glass window set in the door of the lab, she doesn't look through it, but shoves her way into the science lab a little too enthusiastically and almost plows right into a walker. " _Holy sh—_!" surprised, she swings the axe into its head immediately. Its weight falls against her, pushing her back into the door. She smacks her head, on the window of the door drops the bag and the last thing she remembers before everything goes black again is the tinkling of breaking glass as it falls onto her shoulders.

* * *

Her head throbs as she wakes up, something jostles her back. It's the door, moving ever so slightly with the weight of a half-dozen walkers shoved up against it. Their long limbs dangle above her head, groping for her face, just inches below their reach. On top of her, the walker she put down is leaking dark, congealed blood onto her chest, the axe is still clutched in her hand beside her.

Unsure how long she was out, Beth tentatively touches the back of her head, slumping low to keep away from the walkers pushing against the door. They seem to be growing more eager, now that she's moving. She's bleeding, but only a little. Still, smelling like living blood is going to make escaping difficult.

Awkwardly, she pushes the axe and the bag off to the side and slithers out from underneath the dangling, boney arms of the dead. She drags the body of the dead walker away too, and starts to act quickly. With enough pressure, they might actually be able to break through that door. She picks the axe up again and freezes.

It's Ms. Needham.

Maybe, if she took the time, Beth would realize she recognized a lot of the walkers. For some reason, the fact that Ms. Needham died so soon into the end of the world surprises her. She lived alone, with a lot of guns. She was always kind of steely and prickly. Beth wonders what she was doing in the science lab of the high school. Maybe she wandered here after she died.

Brutally, Beth brings the axe down into her gut, shutting her eyes tight against the initial spatter as she pulls it back again.

 _Stupid. That was so stupid._

She should have checked the door. She knows what happens when you don't check the door. Not to mention, what happens when you go on a run alone. She didn't want to do it. But she couldn't ask anyone to come with her. They wouldn't have understood what she was doing, or why. She couldn't explain it to them. Besides that, they're all so new to this. She would have to keep _them_ safe, and she isn't sure she could live with herself if she failed.

Also though… she isn't sure if she can trust them. They aren't reliable survivors yet. They're just people. Still feeding walkers and hoping there's a cure.

With a handful of walker guts, Beth starts to paint herself. The walkers at the door are building up, she can hear a roar of them, behind the initial twisted and gaunt faces pressed into the broken shards of glass still protruding from the window. Trails of smoke linger in the air from the ones that were on fire, but it's been stifled.

Beth never quite got used to the smell of walker guts. Probably no one ever does. But it doesn't turn her stomach anymore, not even when she's covered in it. Outside the window, there's a steady trickle of walkers about twenty yards ahead. If she smells enough like them, they should leave her alone and she'll be able to get to Maggie's car.

As she drops down from the window and starts to calmly mingle into the crowd of walkers, Beth realizes she made a mistake. The same mistake that she condemned Otis and Shane for.

She thought she could handle this all on her own. What if, when that walker surprised her, she hadn't fallen against the door hard enough to shut it? What if she'd fallen the other way, knocked herself out and the walkers had come in and eaten her? Then, she'd be dead and when Shane and Otis came to find the respirator, it would be gone and Carl would be dead too.

The thought made her feel sicker than the walker blood smeared right under her nose.

She's a survivor, but only until she screws up. Same as everyone else.

* * *

 _The water pressure is amazing._ She missed that. Even at Grady, there was something off about it. Being back in her own shower, in her own home, Beth can't help but smile. Just. Not too wide because the singing trickle of steady water is cleaning the gore from her face. The last of it. Her dad made her hose off the stinking thick of it in the yard. Probably a good idea.

They should be good to the plumbing. If everything goes according to plan they would be here awhile.

Beth cringes as she tastes something foul in her mouth from the runoff. She fills her mouth and spits, shaking it off. Forming a rough plan. Because what else can she do? She doesn't understand it, but she's been displaced. She's a time traveler. Maybe it will end as quickly as it started, with a bullet to the head. Maybe she'll fall asleep tonight and wake up even sooner in her memories. She shouldn't waste this time. Just in case it does matter. Just in case she's not just crazy.

 _Dawn shot you. You felt it. Maybe you ain't dead, you're just nuts. Maybe that bullet ripped through your brain in just the right way to keep you breathing, but crazy._

Whatever is going on, she can't just watch it all happen.

So much went _wrong_ the first time around. Maybe she can fix things. Make them better.

 _If it's real, it'll be worth it._

It will be worth the horrified looks. The fear in her father's eyes.

A lump catches in her throat. She hadn't been prepared for them to be so shocked by her reappearance with the respirator. It was too late to play it cool. Too late to just slip it into his old veterinarian bag and let him call it a miracle, because he didn't remember having anything for people, let alone the exact supplies to save Carl.

There was nothing to do but face them.

No one said much. They didn't know what to say, and there was a boy to save.

 _They've got to learn._ But in her mind she remembers Shane breaking the barn door open and she feels cold. He was right. The walkers needed to be put down. Her family needed to recognize that they were dead and gone, not coming back. There was the right way to do it, though.

There had to be a better way.

She could… educate them. Softly. Gently. Help them understand that it is so much worse than they thought. That death stalks them. That it's coming, always, and hungry.

There has to be a way to do it without trying to explain that she knew the future.

Beth shuts off the water, feels behind her ears one last time to make sure she's really clean from all that blood. She towels off, wipes a bit of moisture from the mirror and only glances at her reflection long enough to feel strange about it. She looks so young. Her face is free from marks. Strange that there's a beaten-all-to-hell warrior underneath all that.

 _I'm still the same. I'm me. That face is mine._ She looks away from the glass as she pulls on clean clothes hastily. Wanting to take a minute, but unable to allow herself even that much. Beth sighs, shuts off the light and leaves the bathroom. They all want to talk to her.

She _needs_ to talk to them.

Hershel is in surgery with Patricia. Maggie has gone to look for Lori.

Shane, Rick and Otis wait in the living room, but before she can get to them, Jimmy appears on the stairs. "Beth, what the hell?" he whispers.

She always regretted that they ended on such awkward terms. With her silent and him hurt and confused about why she suddenly despised him. Not to mention his repeated demands that she talk to him, she needed somebody to talk to, clearly. Poor kid. His girlfriend tried to kill herself and he didn't know what to do about it.

Quickly, before he can say another word, she holds him around the middle and squeezes, just once. It's good to see him again _You ain't dying this time either, if I have anything to say about it._

"Beth?" He sighs, clearly thinking that she's using affection to try and change the subject, but the boy doesn't fight her, just presses his arms against her for a moment, until she slithers away from him. "You went into town, _alone_? Are you nuts?"

 _Well, yeah!_ "I knew we needed medical supplies—or we _would_ need them, sooner or later," she shrugs. "Seemed stupid we didn't go clear out that shelter earlier." She starts to walk away from him, wanting to leave it there.

"You can't go doing stuff like that."

She doesn't want to argue with him, but he's got to learn. He and everyone else. The only way you survive is by doing stuff like that. _It's also a pretty quick way to get yourself killed._ "I gotta talk to Rick."

"You don't _know_ Rick." he shakes his head at her, clearly baffled.

Oh yeah. She doesn't. Just saw him for the first time on her way in. "His son almost died. I gotta talk to him."

"His son is _dying_ ," Jimmy corrects her in a whisper.

Raising an eyebrow at Jimmy, Beth foregoes any mention of her father's skills, "He'll be fine." She's done with him, she starts to walk away, then decides that now is as good a time as any, "We're not dating anymore, by the way."

"Beth—what?" He takes a couple of steps towards her on the stairs but she's already leaving and he lets her go.

In the living room, with nothing to do to occupy them, Shane is pacing, Otis is pale and Rick waits closest to the door, unable to take his eyes away for longer than a few minutes. All three of them look up again when Beth enters.

"How did you know we were going to need those things?" Otis gets right to it, as if he can somehow sense how closely his fate was tied to that little boy and that respirator, in another life.

Deciding to expand on the excuse she gave Jimmy, Beth takes a deep breath, practices lying with her eyes open and calm on each of their faces. "I woke up this morning from a dream; my whole family killed and ripped apart by those things. I want us to be safe. I want us to have the supplies that we need. It's a dangerous world. I went to the shelter and I grabbed a bunch of stuff. I had no idea we'd need it so fast."

That answer seems to satisfy them, Otis even manages to take the scrutiny off of her and onto himself with a whispered _'lord's tender mercy'_ that earns him a patronizing glance from Shane.

"But _how_ did you get it? Otis and your dad say that place was surrounded by walkers," Shane steps right up to her, jaw a little tight, arms bulging as he crosses them and digs his fists into his biceps.

"Maybe it's better now?" Otis frowns, doubtful.

"I created a distraction and led them away from the school, but I got pinned down as I was leaving, so I had to take refuge. Found myself alone with one walker, so I killed it, and covered myself in its guts, so the rest of the herd wouldn't pay me mind."

"Does that work?" says Otis in surprise.

Rick finally looks away from the door, and shows that he's been listening the whole time with a nod, "We've done it before. It works, 'cept when they start to smell living flesh again. Don't want to sweat too much, or get caught in a rainstorm." He sounds like he knows from experience.

Beth allows herself a slow exhale that makes her tense shoulders round a little. They're buying it, that she's just that clever, that she doesn't already have a few years of experience in this world. Good. That's probably best. She should be asking questions. If she wants this to work then she needs to act like she doesn't already know everything. "How many people in your group?"

"Ten," Rick doesn't even hesitate, he's so trusting. "One's just a little girl, she's gone missing, but we're looking for her."

Beth tries not to look at Otis, but notices him go pale out of the corner of her eye anyway, his demeanor dropping slightly. He must have found Sophia last night or yesterday, maybe early this morning, and put her in the barn with the others.

He never got the chance to tell them last time. She waits a few minutes, for the silence to rest on them, trying to decide what to do.

"I think—" Otis starts to speak, but Beth interrupts him.

"Are you folks looking for a place?" her voice is bright and loud, Rick and Shane exchange a glance, and while they're communicating silently with each other, Beth quickly turns her gaze to Otis and shakes her head, mouthing the word, _'no'_.

If anything Otis looks even more bleak, but there's a knit in his brow, he's confused. Maybe he's trying to figure out how she knew about the little girl walker he found. The one she's clearly telling him to shut up about for the moment. _If he asks, I'll just tell him I saw him put her in there, out my window. Another lie._

"Y'all could stick 'round here a while, if you like."

"Now—Beth, this is a conversation that your father should be a part of," Otis gives her a look that says he knows exactly where she's going with this.

"Yeah. It's his call," she relents "But. The world's a different place now. More dangerous. We're going to need people," she cocks her head at Rick, "And they need us. Anyone can see that." _Or they should_.

"I—I don't expect…" Rick shakes his head, starts to rise to his feet, looking restless. "My boy."

"Yeah, I get it." Beth nods. He can only deal with that right now and he's falling apart at the prospect of losing Carl. They aren't ready. She can't push them too hard. Can't get Rick to act like the man who took charge of everything and kept them alive on the road for eight months and then built up a whole town out of the rubble of a prison. He's not that guy yet. She was dreaming when she thought she might be able to shake him into being their vigilant leader right away.

 _Nothing happened before. Nothing will happen now. We've got a few days of peace._ Or however long she's allowed to stay here. However long this spell lasts.

The sound of horse hooves beating the ground pulls their collective attention to the window. Maggie is back, with Lori riding with her on the horse.

Beth doesn't even see Rick get up, he's out the door so quick to meet her.

"I gotta, go see to somethin'," mutters Otis. He still looks just as troubled as when Rick first mentioned Sophia was missing. He goes to the back door.

"Wait!" Beth catches Otis just as he steps outside. "Look, he's dealing with a lot right now," she whispers, glancing back, but Shane is out of earshot, watching Lori and Rick reunite through the front window. "That little girl you found… it's her, ain't it? It's gotta be." Beth shook her head, "We'll tell them, but let's make sure Carl is okay, alright?"

"If that boy doesn't pull through—" Otis' voice starts to shake and his eyes are moist.

Beth grabs his shoulder, with considerably more strength than it seems he expected. "He'll be fine. Trust daddy." That's all she can spare him right now, because another thought has just struck her, as she was watching Shane's eyes and clenched jaw pointed out the window.

Otis will live. She turns away from him and heads slowly back into the living room, thinking to herself that although she spared Otis a horrible fate by going out and getting the supplies they needed herself, an unavoidable consequence is that Shane and Otis don't have anything to do. They've got nothing to distract them during this tense moment. Shane loves Carl. Almost like his parents. Otis is filled with guilt. Now they just have to sit and wait, like his folks. How will that change things?

"Shane? It's Shane, right?" Beth thinks carefully about what to say next. The plan is still rough.

Lori and Rick are coming up to the house quick.

"Yeah," he's distracted, barely looking at her.

"You… killed a lot of those things?"

He gives her a look from the corner of his eye, mouth pulling up in half a grin, that dies a moment later.

Last time, Lori ran right up to the house to see her son. Beth remembers that moment. She tried to imagine what that would feel like. Going to your son and hoping he was still alive. This time, he's in surgery. She looked stricken, but she can't go in yet, so she and Rick stay outside, talking while he holds her.

"Yeah, girl. I've killed a lot of those things."

"You know how to use that?" she cocks her head at the gun that her father hasn't ordered him to stop carrying on their property yet. But he will. It's a bad idea, but Beth isn't sure how she can convince him of that yet. She'll probably need Maggie's help.

He raises an eyebrow at her. "Why? You got yourself some designs?"

"Well. Makes sense," she shrugs. "We could use someone to show us a thing or two."

He doesn't reply, but finally looks at her straight on, sizing her up again.

He's going to figure it out, sooner or later. She doesn't want to try and sell the 'I'm a natural' excuse. "I actually… I already, kinda know, how to use a gun. But, my daddy don't know that," she admits the last part quickly.

Both eyebrows bounce towards his hairline and he gives her the first real grin she's seen on his face this time around.

"I'd rather he didn't. But—If I got proper lessons, he'd maybe feel okay about it?" her confidence is waning, but maybe that's good. He seems to respond to that more than her taking the initiative, she realizes. He looked suspicious of her a moment ago when she was looking at him with her chin up, but now that she's shuffling her feet and blushing, he's nodding a little. Ready to agree.

"If we stick 'round here a few days, I could maybe do that for you."

"Carl will be okay." It can't hurt to repeat it. "He _will_. He'll have to rest for a few days though."

That worry in Shane's eyes comes back in full force as he shifts his attention to the closed door of her dad's makeshift surgery.

"'Scuse me," Beth heads outside.

Rick and Lori are in their own world, fighting or comforting each other, it's hard to tell from this distance, but their stance is tense, maybe a little of both. She heads back to Maggie's car where she left her final boon from this morning's run. She pops the trunk, and snatches the compact bow and quiver of arrows from the back-seat.

"What the hell is that?"

Beth starts, she didn't hear Maggie coming up on her. She holds up the bow so she can see properly.

Maggie looks at Beth in a way that Beth only ever saw in days long gone. A strange, loving mixture of fear and mistrust. She appreciates the bow with her hands, taking it from Beth, tentatively. "Where did it come from?" she asks darkly.

"This kid in my science class… he used to brag to me all the time about how good a hunter he was. Said he liked bowhuntin', best of all," in spite of everything, Beth smiles, remembering normal school, "He's dead now," she says softly, "and his whole family. Like so many." Gingerly, she touches the yellow feathers on the tips of the arrows. "I stopped by his house on the way home and grabbed it. I'd seen the pictures on Instagram. I knew he kept it above his bed."

"You wanna learn bow?" Maggie furrowed her brow, looking doubtfully at Beth as she handed the bow back.

"Yeah. Once I find a teacher."

* * *

 **I think this story needs Daryl Dixon, immediately.**

 **Wait - M83**


	3. Ch III - Yet In Flesh I Shall See God

_Plenty to hate about prison, some stuff to hate about military too, but at least I knew what to do. At least I had clear purpose._

During a particularly bad trip, Merle slurred out a mess of upsetting gibberish that Daryl had a hard time shaking off. Even now, it comes back to him. The only reason T-Dog is alive is because of Merle's inability to keep it together. If the man didn't have so many vices, that medication wouldn't have been on hand. T-Dog would be suffering or dead at this very moment. Probably would've been kinder to let him bleed out than sentence him to that kind of painful demise.

 _Guys like us hate being told what to do, 'cept it's the only way to live. Can't handle figuring it out for our own dumb selves._

Unsure why he feels responsible for the dumbass all the sudden, or why his big brother's words float back to him now. If he ain't dead, he might well be soon. Learning how to function with one less hand ain't any kind of easy, even before the dead started trying to eat the living. Living and bleeding, that's what they all are.

 _I could be a soldier. Or a prisoner. Can't be no kinda man._

When Merle got dark, he got chatty, 'till he passed out. Maybe that was one of the reasons why Daryl had never felt a powerful urge to indulge as deeply in recreation as his brother did.

What if he opened up?

What would fall out of him?

The farmhouse looms ahead and Daryl wants to keep his eyes open, wants to take in everything about this new place, what it has to offer what it's dangers might be.

Why though? What would be the point of that? He's just going to do what he's told. He doesn't even mind it. 'Daryl, scout ahead.' _Okay._ 'Daryl, help me look for the girl.' _No problem._ 'Daryl, we need medicine.' _Yeah, right here, hoss._

Why does it feel so good? Pretending like these people might actually need him? Daryl is never needed, and never needs anyone else. Even the end of the world can't change that.

He tells himself it's personal, and maybe that's not even half a lie. It _is_ personal. He admitted as much to Andrea last night. What made him go and do a thing like that? Blabbering on about his shitty life. Ever since Sophia went missing, he'd felt his temper boiling a little hotter whenever he heard someone start to give up on her, whenever he saw their eyes getting heavy, already mourning her. Especially her mom.

 _Kids get lost in the woods. Doesn't mean they stay lost._ Daryl got out, didn't he? Nobody had to tell him to find the girl, that was the truth of it. Whatever Merle might think about how they were wired to be kept on leashes and ordered around, there wasn't any truth to it, in this case. He would've looked for her, no matter what. It was what made sense. It made sense because he was a tracker, and because he was the only person who'd been lost in the woods before.

Hell was already pouring out, so it couldn't exactly break loose, but things could always get worse. They seemed to learn that every day. Carl would be laid up for a while. T-Dog too. Carol was the first to say it, quietly, like she hoped no one would hear, _'Maybe we don't need to go all the way to Fort Benning to be safe.'_

It made sense she'd want to stick around. Her daughter. But nothing else made sense.

Safe? _Safe?_ Did she really believe that? Did any of them?

Probably not.

It might take a while for them to admit it, even to themselves, but Daryl knew that they had to be thinking it. He was. _Nowhere is really safe._

Even this little idyllic dollhouse.

The procession of cars approaches the house with golden light flooding the farmlands round about. Daryl leads them, continuing a pattern they established earlier. No one seems to be exactly sure why it's better for Daryl to be out front; maybe because the bike maneuvers well and if he saw trouble he could stand to hold it off a moment, so the others could turn their cars around.

Shane is out there to meet them in a second, he must've sprinted. He shows them the area they were supposed to park with big hand gestures and more yelling than is necessary, seeing as how no one can understand what the jackass is saying anyway.

Rick and Lori come out of the house with an older man with a head of stark white hair and dark circles under his eyes that suggest a sleepless night. Or maybe several. Strangers gather in front of his house, Daryl finds himself looking only at their boots. He didn't get much sleep either, but he can't exactly bring himself to just ignore his surroundings, that ain't his way. There are three women, all wearing well-worn boots, three men, one is stylish enough with his footwear and unsure enough in his demeanor that Daryl feels certain he's young.

For a moment everyone stands there, uncomfortable and uncertain. Dale doesn't bother with introductions, he just zeroes right in on Rick, "How is he?"

"He'll pull through," Lori's voice is shaky, but at least she's got one.

Rick's face is bloodless. He looks like he's more likely to faint than speak.

"Thanks to Hershel and his people." Lori takes a step to her side, arm sliding easily down the back of a small blonde creature who is stiff as a board beside the front steps.

The girl is _young_. Definitely still in high school, but in spite of the fact that she's got the kind of dollface that belongs in this dollhouse, the first thing that strikes Daryl about her is how _hard_ she looks. Her blue eyes are heavy, fixed on the ground in front of her. She's tense, though he notices her shoulder dip a little as Lori rubs her back. She looks up and locks eyes with him.

Daryl isn't the sort of person who gets breathless just looking at someone for the first time. That doesn't happen. Except it just did. Even if she's a nice looking girl, that's not the reason he stares back, can't break himself away from her armor-piercing eyes; not for any of the base reasons that would make Merle grin, he's not even sure what exactly it is, besides maybe just surprise that when everyone is looking at _her_ , she's looking back at him.

It's clear this girl did something that saved Carl's life, but no one seems to want to reveal what that is. The old man with the white hair stands with a little more tension through his shoulders, even as Lori gives the blonde another quick side-ways squeeze of appreciation.

"We were so worried," says Carol in a breathless whisper as she steps forward to embrace Lori. On either side of them, the tension seems to ease up. Carl is alright, and the relief everyone feels seems to express itself in warm hugs all around. Daryl watches, glances up briefly to see if the blonde is still looking at him.

 _Holy shit, what does this girl want?_ He barely gets the thought out and tears his eyes away again, intent to pretend like she's not burning a hole in his face with those pale, strangely intense eyes.

"How'd it happen?" asks Dale, still squarely focused on Rick.

"Hunting accident," with the tiniest scoff of exasperation Rick hits the side of his leg and shakes his head, "That's all. Just a stupid accident."

The girl is _still_ staring. Like the cracking of a whip she bolts suddenly and makes a beeline right towards him. Daryl watches her come with a tight jaw as she somehow manages to maneuver around his crossbow and put her arms around his waist. Unable to remember the last time he was hugged, Daryl stands stunned for a moment, but she seems to time it perfectly, everyone else is too preoccupied to even notice at first, except for the tall brunette with the wrinkled brow.

Daryl looks around, not sure whether to push her away, or alert someone to the situation, or pretend like it's not happening. She ain't exactly hurting anything, it's only that this is… uncomfortable. And warm. Very warm. _Too damn warm, all the sudden_. The crossbow hangs off to the side of him as he awkwardly puts one hand against her arm. _Am I pushing or pulling?_ Neither, it seems. His fingers close around her and he finds himself just holding onto her, feeling her pulse race. Her soft fall of hair brushes his shoulder.

She hangs on long enough that the others finally see it. Daryl makes an effort not to look at their faces, especially not Shane, Glenn or T-Dog as he can already imagine good and well what they're thinking.

As quickly as she came at him, the blonde pulls back, the tiniest smile on her face. Those eyes have lost all that viciousness that made him so uneasy. They're warm, maybe a little sad. Her pink lip trembles, but all she says is, "Welcome!" brightly, before she immediately turns on her heel and heads back into the house, both hands clenched in fists.

The tall brunette and the old man glance at the door closing briefly before they look at each other. The brunette raises her eyebrows, _"You see?"_ she mouths.

"I apologize…" The old man turns to Daryl, clearly expecting an introduction.

"Daryl Dixon."

"I'm sorry for that, Daryl. My daughter, Beth, is not quite herself. She's had a rough go of it recently."

"Ain't we all," mutters Daryl, getting at least half his bearings back after one little blonde doll managed to knock them down. _Only a girl. Only gone a little batshit._ He manages to shake it off, or at least look as though he shook it off. He still has to make an effort not to meet the eyes of any wiseass who might have something careless to say. It ain't funny. She's hurting, that much is obvious. Like everyone else, she's probably lost a lot of people. Finding new ones has got to be a bit overwhelming.

Unfortunately, it seems that T-Dog either doesn't realize what Daryl is trying to definitely not acknowledge, or he just doesn't care, because the man sidles right up to him and claps him on the shoulder using the arm that isn't all bandaged up. "Hey, man. You okay?" with a half-smug smile. At least he's got the courtesy to stir up a little bit of genuine concern in his voice.

"Never better," Daryl growls back at him.

"Only met her last night, but she's a sweet thing. A little intense, maybe," T-Dog shrugs and Daryl grinds his teeth, wondering why everyone feels like they need to defend this crazyass girl to him. What do they think he's gonna do to her? He'd much rather pretend nothing happened at this point.

"She ain't taken my wallet or nothin'," Daryl snorts, annoyed that he still feels hot in the face.

To his credit, T-Dog seems to finally realize that it's time to just laugh this off. After a little chuckle he pats Daryl again, somewhat less awkward. "She's Beth, that's Maggie—they're Hershel's daughter. Then there's Jimmy," he motions to the young looking guy, "Farm hand. He's kinda glaring at you right now on account of Beth just broke up with him last night," T-Dog added in undertone.

"Just figured the sun was in his eyes," Daryl frowns back at the dumb kid. Actually, he'd just thought that was what his face looked like.

"Otis and Patricia," he motions to the couple standing up on the porch now, watching the lot of them with matching, grim expresisons. "This place is nice, huh?" he adds in undertone.

That's all he needs to say and Daryl gets it. Fort Benning is no longer the attractive prospect that it used to be. A little relief sweeps over Daryl to know this. He'd never been crazy about the idea. It's good for them to have a goal, a reason to keep moving, but Atlanta turned out to be overrun. There is a good chance that most places would be like that, especially places where people would flock, like Fort Benning.

People were the problem. They brought the problem with them.

Daryl gestures to T-Dog's arm "Well, gotta stick 'round, at least 'til our _wounded_ are up for travel." Even then, Daryl never really felt like Fort Benning was the answer.

"Nah, I'll be fine. Already fine. And Carl's gonna be good." T-Dog trails off as he adds, "But the doc wants both of us to spend some time off our feet. Now that I got something to fight the infection in my system…" looking uncomfortable, he nods at the ground, "Thanks, by the way."

"You needed it. We had it." Daryl finds he can't look at his face, he caught a little too much sincerity in T-Dog's eyes.

"I mean it, I _appreciate_ it."

"Forget it."

"I won't."

Andrea, Glenn and Carol are already starting to set up camp, Shane's giving instructions again, Dale is expressing some strong feelings about where to park the Winnebago. T-Dog grips Daryl's shoulder one last time before he drifts off to help whatever he can before he's inevitably ordered to rest. Just in front of the stairs, Rick is asking Hershel for some maps.

 _Good. Maybe I can get to work._

Before the world ended, Daryl would get restless, stuck in one place for too long without anything to do. Luckily, there was always some desperation. Usually, he needed cash to repair his truck or Merle's bike, or to bail Merle out. Or, he needed food, in which case he'd often trek off into the woods for a few days at a time. He'd figured out that the best way to live was to have a purpose, something to accomplish each day, even if that purpose was just 'feed yourself' or 'find cigarettes'.

Finding Sophia is more than that. He can't sleep, thinking about her out there scared and exhausted and hungry. He feels guilty eating, know that she might be going hungry. Purpose after the end of the world is a little more difficult, but no less simple.

 _Find the girl_.

It isn't long before Maggie returns with a map, and Daryl notices Rick beckoning a few people over to take a look at their territory. The search area.

"How long has this girl been lost?" It's clear that Hershel has been too preoccupied with the shot boy to think much about the lost girl, but now that Carl is resting and on his way to recovery, Daryl can hear real concern in his voice, that can't possibly he helped by Rick's answer.

"This'll be day three." Rick can't say it without betraying that he hasn't sleep much in three days.

 _We can't give up on her._

Unrolling the map on the hood of Hershel's truck, they use rocks to hold the edges' down, "County survey map. Shows terrain and elevations." Maggie explains and Daryl lets his eyes trace over the roughest parts of the forest first.

"This is perfect." Rick finally sounds hopeful. But Daryl can't blame him for being a little morbid. His son almost died yesterday. "We can finally get this thing organized. We'll grid the whole area, start searching in teams."

"Not you. Not today." Hershel chides him firmly, "You gave three units of blood."

Rick looks for a moment like he might protest, but even as Hershel speaks the man seemed to lose a few shades of health, his skin is grey, his eyes bloodshot and rimmed with dark circles. "You wouldn't be hiking five minutes in this heat before passing out."

"And, I was thinking I'd drive up to the interstate, see if Sophia wandered back." Shane looks over Rick's shoulder at Carol, briefly. "Maybe check out the woods around there a second time, see if anything's changed."

Personally, Daryl would prefer to track alone anyway. Still, it would have been nice to have someone working in a nearby grid. He has a gut feeling Sophia won't go back. "I'm gonna head back to the creek, work my way from there." Daryl already found the path on the map he wanted to take right about the moment the unfurled the map.

"All right, tomorrow then. We'll start doing this right." Rick says, still looking like he might fall over any second. The man needs to get some serious fluids in the mean time.

"That means we can't have our people out there with just knives." Shane grumbles, eyes flashing to Hershel, challenging but cautious. "They need the gun training we've been promising them. I'd be happy to—"

But Hershel won't hear it. "I'd prefer you not carrying guns on my property."

Daryl falters, hands a little tighter around his crossbow. It isn't technically a gun, so he'll hang onto it, unless Hershel specified crossbows as well… hell, even then, he isn't about to give it up.

"We've managed so far without turning this into an armed camp." Hershel adds, a disapproving glance swept over them, but he tightens his lip, content to leave it at that.

"All due respect, you get a crowd of those things wandering in here..." Shane can be known to use a more respectful tone, but Daryl agrees with him completely this time. It doesn't make sense not to be armed any more. They ought to teach everyone.

"Look, we're guests here. This is your property and we will respect that." Rick's words make it seem like he's speaking to Hershel, but it's clear he's not. "First things first: Set camp, find Sophia."

"I hate to be the one to ask, but somebody's got to. What happens if we find her and she's bit? I think we should all be clear on how we handle that." Shane speaks delicately, eyes slanted in Carol's direction again.

"You do what has to be done." Rick's jaw is set.

 _We'll find her._ Daryl suddenly ain't breathing so well.

"And her mother? What do you tell her?" Maggie asks quietly.

"The truth." Andrea answers for the rest of her tongue-tied friends.

 _She'd know anyway._

"I'll gather and secure all the weapons. Make sure no one's carrying till we're at a practice range off site. I do request one rifleman on lookout. Dale's got experience." Shane acquiesces easy, suspiciously easy, but Daryl's attention is more on Hershel and Maggie, sharing some kind of psychic conversation.

Hershel gives a small, almost imperceptible shake of his head in response to his daughter's unasked question.

Daryl can't even begin to guess what that's about yet. _Just find the girl. You can figure out these people after she's back with he mama._

"Our people would feel safer, less inclined to carry a gun." Rick manages a steely tone as he faces Hershel.

The old man still seems distracted, but it's clear he heard the question. Grimly, he agrees with another small nod.

"Thank you." Rick responds through tight teeth.

"That stuff you brought, got more antibiotics, bandages, anything like that?" Maggie sounds hopeful.

"Just what you've seen." Andrea admits. She looks exhausted and then Daryl realizes he's exhausted. They were both up looking for Sophia instead of sleeping last night.

"We've got a good amount, mostly on account of Beth scooping up everything she could carry inside the FEMA shelter, but something she said makes me think we oughta stock up while we can." Maggie grimaces, "I'll make a run into town."

"Not to the same place your sister went?" Rick asks in alarm.

"No, there's a pharmacy just a mile down the road. I've done it before." Maggie shrugs, looking to her father, but he doesn't protest the plan.

Rick swivels his head around to where the others are setting up camp, "See our man there in the baseball cap? That's Glenn, our go-to-town expert. I'd ask him along just to be cautious."

 _Good idea, nobody should be going anywhere all alone._ Daryl smirks to himself as he peels out to go do exactly that. "Good thing I'm nobody," he mutters to himself under his breath.

* * *

 **Just a short Daryl POV section, to touch base with our favorite redneck. Next section up very soon!**

 **Late Night – Foals**


	4. Chapter IV - If The Dead Rise Not At All

Otis had himself a rough day, but by the time night comes around, Beth can't find it in herself to feel bad for him. Otis doesn't understand. She can't make him understand. She's not even sure precisely how she managed to convince him to stay quiet about Sophia, for even a day. He was so baffled, he cornered her twice during the long, hot day and asked, _'Why can't I just break it to them that the girl is one of them now? That she's in the barn? They've got a man out there looking for her right now—for no reason! Her mother is worried.'_ All, really good points, but Beth beat him back, subdued him with nothing but her own conviction. Can't do it. They can't deal with it. She said she'd tell them, but it had to be in the right way. She just needed a little time.

 _I'll tell them myself. Gently._

But it couldn't wait much longer. Like Otis had said, it didn't make a whole lot of sense to let them keep worrying and looking. Daryl was going to get hurt, be laid up for a couple of days. She didn't want him to have to go through that this time.

Seeing him again cinched it. She couldn't stand to let him get hurt.

She knew it was stupid. It would maybe even scare him, but she couldn't help it. He didn't know that in another life they'd been so close. He didn't know how close they'd come to being the last woman and man standing and how… it had been okay. They were happy. Against all odds.

He didn't know that she'd been snatched away before she could thank him for looking for her, for _finding_ her.

That was a different world. In this one, he didn't know her and it showed in his stormy face, as she couldn't look away from him. What if she never got the chance again. What if it just ended. _Just let me hold onto you, once more._

He did. However nervous and confused he obviously was, he didn't push her away. That was the most she could ask for, right now.

Sneaking out to the barn after dark, Beth can't dwell on that little victory from earlier in the day. She can't think about anything that might make her smile. Tonight's work is too grim to allow for that.

 _It's gotta start tonight._ The problem is, she knows how hard this will be, for Daryl and Carol especially.

 _"I remember. When that little girl came out of the barn, you were like me."_ She'd said those words to Daryl in that other life. She doesn't want to be the one to cause him to feel that way, but they have to know the truth.

Her daddy has a hard truth to learn as well, but she's not sure she'll be able to teach it to him. She's got the plan in place. She knows each step she has to take. She let Daryl search in vain for one day and return with nothing but a Cherokee rose to comfort Carol. She left Carol stranded in uncertainty for one day. She let her father keep his illusions about the walkers, _for one day._

Tomorrow, everything will change, and she'll have to deal with the consequences.

Carl is still laid up in bed. Her daddy is still tentative about letting Rick and his group camp out. It's all so delicate and she'd forgotten that. She's used to everyone as a family, encountering them as strangers is jarring, and in many ways… painful.

 _When Sophia, and mama and Shawn came out of that barn, it changed us. It showed us how broken we all were. Made us see how much we needed each other._ But it was too brutal. Too hard on them, especially for Carol, Daryl and her father. She couldn't allow that again. Maybe it had worked out alright last time, but that didn't mean she could let them suffer through it again, not when there might be a better way.

The compound bow handles a little differently from the crossbow that Daryl was teaching her how to use, but in many ways it's easier. Loading it isn't like deadlifting a hundred and fifty pounds, for starters, and something about the way it aims makes her feel more in control. She still wants lessons, when Daryl is ready to talk to her, but for now, a little impromptu practice doesn't seem like a terrible idea.

Shane takes night-watch. Someone ought to put together a schedule so that he doesn't end up out there every night. Looking back, Beth feels sure that a lack of sleep definitely contributed to his alarming behavior towards the end. She moves quickly on light feet, keeping her bow and arrows tight, sticking to the shadows.

Keeping a look out for walkers doesn't require as much vigilance, since they're loud, especially when they smell the living and get excited. He shouldn't be looking so closely into the night for a little creeping thing like Beth and her new compound bow. She slithers close to the structures like a rat, moving only when he's definitely looking the other way and climbs up into the loft of the barn, silently.

The crowd of walkers below are quiet too, filling the air with a stinking, warm rot. She doesn't see her brother, her mother or Sophia right away. She loads the first arrow and tries not to look at any of them too closely. Doesn't want to recognize her friends and family and neighbors if she doesn't have to. _They're dead. It's not them. Aim for the head and fire, that's all._ She breaths out real slow as she lets the first arrow fly. It finds its mark with a low whistle and the first walker drops.

Noticing her, the small herd starts to get restless, begins making their way towards the ladder into the loft, moaning and groping the air.

Her hands shake slightly as she nocks a second arrow, but they go steady as she exhales again and lets the arrow fly.

She hasn't got enough arrows to put one through each of them. Even if she did manage to get right through the brain stem every time, she'd still have to climb down there eventually and use a knife on some of the walkers. About halfway through her quiver, her hands begin to shake too violently for her to strike accurately. Sweat pours down her forehead, and she feels ill from the stench in the air and from the effort of not looking directly at the tall red-headed walker that has fought her way to the front of the little horde in the barn, and the stocky walker right next to her.

Sophia hangs back, too small and fragile to stay close to the group, she keeps getting knocked back, even as she pushes forward.

 _I gotta do it._ But even as she takes aim at her mother's head, Beth's hands lose their strength _. This is the real reason it had to be tonight. I've gotta do it._ Her mother and her brother were in there for weeks, rotting and hungry, because they wouldn't end it. Because they all deluded themselves into thinking that they were just _sick_. Her elbow slips into a wide bend, she trembles as she tries to force it straight.

Beth wants to end it for them. She wants to put them to rest. She doesn't even know how many walkers she's killed, but putting an arrow through her mother's head was never going to be easy.

 _It's gotta be me._

Beth cannot go through that again. Why did she think this would be easier? Why had she thought that slipping in here in the dark would be any less of a nightmare. Her mother always had strong arms, strong from carrying her children, from working, from guiding. She'd held her with those strong arms just a day before she got bit, reassuring her that everything would be alright.

Now, her mother reaches for her with hands like claws, her head careless falls to the side as though her neck can't hold her up anymore. Her eyes are averted and lifeless, streaks of unnatural color twist underneath her pale, waxy, undead flesh.

The first arrow misses her entirely, and strikes the ground, bouncing uselessly. She hadn't even put enough force behind it to make it stick. Beth takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes. She should have thought to bring headphones and her old cell phone. She needs something besides the moaning to listen to. She needs to block this out, experience as little of what she is doing as possible.

The second arrow goes through her mother's shoulder.

The sweat on her hands won't allow her to hold the bow steady, by the time she's wasted every single arrow from her quiver, her cheeks are wet and she can barely see. Her chest aches. Her mother looks like Saint Sebastian, but she's still moving, though slowly, pinned to the ground inside the barn. The other walkers converge around her, hiding her from sight as they sway closer together. They clamber to get to the ladder that none of them can climb.

At the top of the ladder, Beth rests her head on her knees and weeps.

 _It was always going to be bad._

Somehow, this thought is not reassuring. It doesn't make it any better that she either knew, or should have known that putting her mother down would feel about the same the second time as it had the first. If anything, it made it worse. Forced her to experience it all over again, and then some. Knowing it's the right thing to do doesn't make it any less than hell.

 _But I can't even do it._ Beth hasn't felt this small since she woke up in that hospital. Grief always has a way of making her forget her strength. That's why she tried to push it away. Tried not to cry anymore. She can't think about all she's overcome. About her victory yesterday with Otis and Carl. She can't even think about this second chance, this _blessing_ she has to set things right. All she can think about in this moment is how helpless she feels, watching the Governor execute her father, how close she came to killing herself the first time she lost her mother and brother.

Shawn stands over their walker mother. Sophia is still struggling to make it into the pack. Beth managed to put down half a dozen of them, but it's not enough.

 _I can't do this alone._

* * *

 _We'll find her._

Flowers bloom all along the trail. Flowers for lost children.

 _For dead children._

There's more than enough dead in the world. This one should be alive. This little girl is alive. Daryl knows he should sleep. After searching all day today and staying up all night searching before that, he should sleep now. He should be exhausted.

He _is_ exhausted. But that doesn't seem to matter to his body. He stares at the roof of his tent, head a mess, back all twisted and neck sore from holding his head up. He wants to crumble. He wants to keep looking, but he knows that he'll start to see things if he doesn't get some sleep.

Every time he forces his eyes shut, they slowly drift back open without him even noticing, until he's staring at the roof of the tent again, thinking about flowers and all the children who get lost.

A shadow appears on the side of the tent, a curtain of long hair brushing against the frame before the door zips open. Daryl sits up, clutching his dagger, though he's fairly confident it's just Andrea or Lori or—

"Daryl, you awake?" murmurs a soft voice that he's unaccustomed to hearing. It's the little blonde offensive tackle.

"Beth?" that's what T-Dog said her name was, but he hasn't had the chance to use it yet.

"I'm sorry to bug you," her voice is thick and she sniffs. Has she been crying? "I need your help with something."

"Uh… yeah," he grumbles, starting to climb out of his tent, as Beth backs away from the door to allow him space. He wasn't going to be able to sleep anyway.

"You'll need your crossbow," she whispers, voice shaking.

He falters at that. "Everythin' okay?"

For whatever reason, Beth doesn't want to lie to him. Her face tries to stay serene but can't manage it. Sparkling tears shine out of her stricken eyes; staring at him in the dark she takes a long pause and a deep breath before she says firmly, "I just need help."

Trusting new people still doesn't feel right. For that matter, trusting anyone is kind of a bitch. All the same, he follows her, crossbow over his shoulder, staying quiet and stepping lightly as they span out wide away from camp, hoping to avoid being spotted by Shane. She's taking him to the old barn.

 _Why me?_ He wants to ask, but somehow he feels like even if she did give him an answer, he can already guess what it would be. Rick and Shane have proved that they have an opinion about everything, and aren't content to just go along with someone else's plan, even each others. T-Dog is still injured, and whatever is going on it's got to be something her own people wouldn't be happy about, otherwise she could get her sister or Otis or even her father.

She asked him, because somehow she knows that he's less likely to argue with her. Maybe he should argue. Maybe he should ask questions, rather than just following orders like a good little soldier. As Beth reaches the barn and begins to climb up into the loft, he stops. Once she's up, she turns back and when she doesn't see him climbing, she hangs down, looking at him questioningly in the dark.

"What's this about?" He grips his crossbow a little tighter, watching her deceptively sweet face, framed by all that falling golden hair.

Beth's shoulders slump a little, her hands go limp against the top of the ladder. "I think you better climb up here first. I'll explain." She disappears inside the barn.

Maybe it's more curiosity than a real desire to help her out, although she does seem genuinely distressed. He pulls the strap of his crossbow over his head and climbs the ladder with a single backward glance at Shane's silhouette on the top of the Winnebago.

The second he crawls inside the barn, the smell of death hits him sharp in the face. " _Fuck_ ," he grumbles, getting more used to it by the day, but it's never quite pleasant.

"Shhh," Beth puts a finger to her lips, she's sitting a few feet away, still back far, away from the front of the barn.

Then he hears it, moaning, struggling and shuffling. He crab-walks over to where Beth sits with her legs crossed, holding onto her ankles as she stares straight ahead, into the depth of the barn, where the stench and the growling lurks. He wants to demand to know why there seem to be walkers locked in this barn, but she said she'd explain.

"My dad doesn't believe they're dead," Beth whispers, not turning her head to look at him.

 _Holy shit._ He thinks back to earlier, when he noticed Maggie and Hershel having their little psychic conversation, right after Rick implied that they oughta put Sophia down if they found her and she was bit.

"He thinks they're sick," Beth says a little more firmly, looking at him straight on to make sure he understands. "Somebody's gonna have to explain it to him. Not me. He won't listen if it's me. Not yet."

"…You tryin' to say that your daddy has been keeping walkers in the barn? Instead of putting them down?" _No wonder this girl's been 'having a rough time' as her daddy said. No closure._

"I ran out of arrows," she reaches across the floor and reveals a compound bow and an empty quiver. "Gun's too loud. There's too many of them left."

As bizarre as this revelation about the farmer's unfortunately flawed perspective on the walkers, Daryl feels a strange sense of relief to know that the only reason she came and woke him up, rather than someone else is because he's a bowman. Strange relief. Strange disappointment. "I get it, now. I'll take care of it." He starts to rise up but she snatches him firmly by the wrist.

Her hand is warm and he can already feel the slight caress of her palm against his pulse as she draws her hand up his arm just a little, changing the gesture from capturing to comforting, effortlessly, "That's not all," her voice is smaller. "Otis finds other ones out in the woods sometimes, when he's hunting. He brings them back for my daddy and puts them in here."

"Okay?" now he doesn't get it anymore.

"He found a little girl the other day."

Feeling nothing but the cold and hearing nothing but the shuffles of the walkers, Daryl lets her words sink in, with all their implications.

Beth's penetrating eyes won't leave his, she stares straight through the dark, into him, waiting for a reaction.

He realizes he can still feel that warmth around his forearm. He wrenches out of her grip.

" _Daryl_ —Daryl, I'm _sorry_ ," Beth's voice breaks.

"Might not be her," he snaps back, more vicious even than he meant, though he wasn't trying to be gentle.

"It's _her_ ," Beth puts a hand on his shoulder.

 _What is it with this girl and all the touching?_ He glides out from under her hand, drops his crossbow from off his shoulder and loads his first bolt, feeling colder as he heads towards the edge of the loft. He stations himself near the steep steps, looking down into the mass of writhing bodies, he doesn't take more than a second to find the first head that needs a bolt. He can see the neon flashes of color from Beth's arrows. She already did a good chunk of it for him, but he makes short work of the remaining walkers, besides a few stragglers, all tangled up underneath the pile of fallen corpses at the foot of the stairs.

There she is.

When he understood that Beth was saying that Sophia was dead, was one of _them_ and locked in here, he'd felt right away that she was telling the truth and that he'd find Sophia down below, but seeing it for himself is still a crushing blow, right to his heaving chest. She's caught, tangled up and stumbling around her thin ankles, the large walkers crisscross on top of each other where they fell in a small pile surrounding the grounded rung of the ladder.

Beth's trying to say something, but Daryl won't hear it. He moves away from her, down the ladder and drawing his dagger, vaguely aware of her fingertips brushing his back. He makes a beeline towards the girl. He grabs a handful of her mangy hair in one fist as he bring her eye onto the blade of his dagger.

Sophia goes limp and he feels his knees give out beneath him, sinking into the tangled limbs of the dead and letting her fall to the ground, his knife still stuck in her head.

How long he sits there, Daryl can't tell. He can't really hear anything besides the pounding blood in his skull, can't feel besides the cold and the grit of walker filth on his palms. He doesn't even mean to look up, but at some point he sees Beth moving the bodies aside to get to one final walker struggling beneath the others.

Her face looks serene and untroubled, in sharp contrast to the turbulence Daryl feels, the shuddering waves of chilled sorrow and hot rage, warring over his flesh. She stoops down, looking at the red and grey mess with such sorrow and such deep love, tears resting in the curves of each eye without falling. She wields her dagger deftly in one hand, the blade glints like cats eyes in the dark gore-spattered barn. Knowing what it means but feeling too overwhelmed to save any pity for her, Daryl looks away, all the same he hears the sickening bite of the knife as it breaks through the skin of the walker's temple. Who is she? Probably her mother, though she seems a bit young for Hershel.

Beth takes a long time to look up at him, her lip trembles.

For whatever reason he's overcome with another wave of thunder, not as loud inside his skull as when he first saw Sophia, but still sharp, and heavy. "I want you to stay away from me." It is so easy to take anything he feels and twist it into anger. So simple. It doesn't even matter that he knows he is doing it. It's easier. It is infinitely easier than looking at Sophia.

If she's hurt by the gravel it his shaky warning, Beth hides it well. "I still need your help." She stares at the bodies, head down, unable or unwilling to meet his gaze.

What are they supposed to do with the bodies?

"I can clean this up, but I need you to talk to Shane and Rick. Tell them what we did. Get them and…. the three of you need to explain to daddy. Make him understand."

Why should he do this girl any more favors? The last one is still filling his lungs up with icy cold. He can barely see for this fire. As if able to read his mind, her shoulders slump, without looking up she pleas, voice going very soft, "please."

"Why can't you talk to your dad?" He can hear the aggression in his voice, but he can't subdue himself, not yet, still too raw.

"Because when my daddy sees what I've done, he'll think I murdered my mama, and I just can't see his face when he believes that."

* * *

 **BIG thank you to everyone who's been leaving reviews, I'm sorry I got so busy I haven't been able to reply to them this time. Real life decided to happen all at once J I've been so overwhelmed by the response from you guys! You are all SO SWEET! I'm so happy you're enjoying the story so far, and I'm sorry we've gotten off to a bit of a slow start, I'm hoping to start updating regularly very soon, but for now we've just a short angsty chapter.**

 **More to come very soon!**

 **Glass – Thompson Square**


	5. Chapter V - Why Then

_I really screwed this up._

Beth doesn't even consider sleep as an option tonight. Not after what happened. Not after what she did to herself. And to Daryl. Besides, there's still work to do.

While Daryl stays on his knees, surrounded by the finally quiet dead, Beth drags her mother and brother away from the mangled bodies of her friends and neighbors. Their decaying flesh feels more delicate when the muscles aren't tense and wild to grab at her. She pulls the arrows from her mother, each one sickeningly squelching as she plucks them, ripping further through the flesh and tissue. "Sorry," she doesn't even mean to say it, but the word trembles out of her like a whimper.

Gathering her arrows, she tries to breath normally, fights back any urge to cry again. It's over. It was _already_ over for her, so why does it feel like she just lost them all over again? Daryl won't look at the little corpse of the girl. As much as it stung her when he told her to stay away from him, she can empathize, and at the moment at least, being alone might not be such a bad idea for either of them.

But that's not an option either. He needs to get Rick and Shane and they need to talk to her daddy, and she needs to stay with the dead.

For several minutes, she can't bring herself to hardly move, besides little shuffling steps as she sorts through her arrows and Daryl's bolts. Finally she sways, nervous as she approaches Daryl on his knees, taking on the same caution she's accustomed to using when coming near to an unfamiliar horse. Gently she lets the feathers on the end of one of his bolts brush against his shoulder, it draws a soft line in the sweat and dirt. Heat rolls off his flesh, he's just as keyed up as she is, but he trembles slightly, even at this slight touch. "I'll wash them and get them ready to be buried on my own."

He takes his time to turn his head and make eye-contact with the bolts she's holding loosely beside his arm. He snatches them away from her and rises up to his feet in a swift, fluid motion that puts him right in her face, towering over her, keen eyes fierce and iridescent in the dark, though his voice betrays no emotion other than anger, "It doesn't matter. They're dead."

"It _does_ matter," but her voice breaks trying to hold her own, for just a moment she's too tired. She closes her eyes, swallows and faces him, just about closing the distance between them as she jabs her nose right towards him. "They were people we _loved_."

"Not me! She wasn't mine. She was _nothin'_ to me," Daryl growls back at her viciously, but he still can't even turn his head to glance at her, his jaw is throbbing as he grinds his teeth.

"That's a damn lie and you know it," Beth hisses back at him. "I'm cleaning the dead. We're going to bury them and have a funeral because that's what people do. When they can." Her voice crackles again, remembering her father in another life, his desecrated body left to rot amongst a horde of the dead.

 _Not this time. None of it. None of the horror._ She pushes the thought from her mind, rejecting the threat of that other life.

Daryl doesn't seem to have anything more to say, but he isn't running off yet. He seems rooted in place, except she realizes he's leaning back as far as he can to make space between them, looking out at her through a heavy, lowered brow.

"No sense waiting now," her voice shakes, "Might as well go get Rick. Get Shane. Wake up daddy. Make him understand."

" _Understand_ that they're walking corpses?" Daryl snorts, still furious, but trys hard to put on his usual flippant air, though his clenched fists and the snarl in the back of his throat give away just how funny he doesn't find anything at the moment. "If he can't see that for himself, he's a damn fool."

"I want you to _quit_ bein' nasty," Beth says between her teeth. She'd forgotten how hostile Daryl used to be, back when they first met, she'd hardly talked to him, except when they didn't have a choice. She hadn't really gotten to know him until they had to flee from the farm and spend the winter on the road, before they made it to the prison. By then, he seemed to have managed to work through some of his anger. He liked being helpful. He liked protecting people. He was good at it. Before that time though, she did remember he had what her dad might describe as 'an attitude problem.' "He believes what he wants to believe. The world went to absolutely _shit_ ," she shakes her head, looking around the barn at the bodies again for an unnecessary reminder, "we all deal with it differently. Denial. Rage. Bein' a total _jackass_."

His lip curls and she immediately feels bad, because he isn't yelling anymore. She is. He looks exhausted. As angry as he is, he's like her right now. She needs to remember that. They feel the same way. Like absolute shit.

"I'm sorry," her shoulders slump a little as she tries to backtrack. She needs his help right now, and he needs hers, whether he realizes it or not. It's probably not a good time to call him out for having a chip on his shoulder. That won't fix anything. Besides, he doesn't need to be fixed, not until he wants to. It happened last time, all on its own, because _he_ wanted to change. She can't force that. She just has to remember that the capacity for change is inside of him.

His brow rises slightly as he looks at her, eyes suddenly searching, for just an instant, before he seems to slip back into enraged stoicism.

"I just want this to be over." Says Beth in a hush, an inaudible sigh escaped between her teeth, "It can't be over until daddy understands."

"It ain't ever gonna be over," Daryl corrects her in a mutter.

She wanted to tell him she knew. She knew what he meant. This was the world now, until the end. They rest of their life would be a fight. She wanted to tell him that it was alright, or that it could be alright. They could be.

He sniffs, one hand violently rubbing at his chin as he turns away from her, ready to stalk off.

It wouldn't matter if she did say any of that right now. He wouldn't believe her. He isn't ready. "Please, Daryl."

Just as he reaches the ladder, he stops, turns his head just a little, so she could see the silhouette of his profile, but he doesn't look back at her. "Yeah. Got it."

She watches him go, still feeling like it wasn't enough. _You've got plenty of time. Don't be impatient. He wants you to leave him alone right now. It's okay._ But it isn't. It makes her heart break all over again as his words came back to her.

As red and orange light begins to trickle in through the wooden planks of the barn wall, Beth does her best to clean the dirt, and congealed blood from their faces, using the shredded remains of their ragged clothing to cover the more gruesome wounds that could reasonably be disguised. Her back aches and she feels raw and weak by the time she's finished. The sun was up. It was time to break the lock off the door so that the bodies could be taken out of the barn.

Outside, the day glares at her, accusingly bright, reminding her she hasn't slept a single minute, and that she spent all of the dark working on this secret. It was a task that needed to be done, and she'd wanted to do it _well_. But it only took a moment to work out that there was no good way, there was just the quick way. The quiet way. The way where she was the only one who got hurt.

 _Except then I had to go and drag Daryl into it._

She breaks the lock off the door and tosses the bolt cutters and the rattling chain aside. She has every intention of sitting cross-legged in the dirt until her father showed up. He'd have to show up. He'd have to deal with her. She was surprised that Rick, Daryl and Shane had managed to keep him occupied this long.

When footsteps finally did approach her, it wasn't her father who'd come.

Beth took one look at Maggie's tear-streaked face and understood that somehow, Maggie _knew_. Her older sister looked between the slightly open doors of the barn and her sister, mouth open a little, green eyes feral.

"I was just trying to remember some of the songs mama used to sing to me when I was restless at night, not sleeping," Beth confessed, "She only sang to you real quiet, after you were asleep."

"I was just pretending to sleep." Maggie's voice is raw, like she's been screaming.

Over the course of a few minutes, Maggie slowly makes her way to where Beth is planted on the ground with a rounded back and sleep-deprived, drooping gaze. Maggie tucks her feet under herself and sits beside her, staring at the barn. "Beth, what've you done?" the question comes out as little more than breath and a slight whine.

Realizing that Maggie is still shaking, still crying softly, Beth reaches out tentatively and when Maggie accepts one palm on her back, Beth curls in to hang off of her, feeling the tiny tremors course through her as she weeps.

"They're dead, Maggie. The walkers aren't sick people. They're dead. They can't come back. I couldn't let any of them stay like that." Convincing Maggie was never going to be as hard, Beth realized that almost immediately. Maggie is more ready than any of them. After the incident with the well the day before, Beth knows Maggie gets it well enough that this isn't just a severe case of rabies, but it's still got to be difficult to say goodbye. "You wouldn't want to be stuck like that, would you? I'd never want it. If I get ever get bit and I turn, you put me down. That's how it's gotta work now."

"But _this._ " Maggie pulls away from her, shaking her head and leaning back far enough that she can get a good look at her little sister. "That was _mom_ and _Shawn_. You killed them."

"I put them down."

Maggie's disbelief only seems to grow at that, shaking her head she looks back at the barn, recoiling slightly.

"It was the best way to do it. Quiet. Before anybody panics. You and daddy didn't have to see."

"But what about _you_?"

"I'll be alright," Beth says, and it's as if saying it casts a kind of spell and makes it real. She can do this. "You'll be alright too. And daddy."

Maggie looks doubtful at that, she rubs fiercely at the tear tracks under her eyes and swallows hard before she says, "I hope you're right. I only overheard a little. Rick and Daryl went into daddy's study. I heard Daryl say something about the barn… I didn't even stick 'round long enough to hear anymore. As soon as he mentioned the barn, I knew it must've been you who told 'em."

Beth furrows her brow at that, staring at Maggie. "You knew it was me?"

"You've been so weird these last few days," Maggie doesn't look at her directly, "And you were all covered in… Daddy didn't wanna see it, but you must've killed a ton of them in order to get outta there alive."

The day before, her father had pulled her aside to talk to her about going off alone to get the supplies. He _hadn't_ wanted to believe it, he kept trying to downplay what she'd done. She'd heard it in his voice. It made her angry. It's one of her dad's coping mechanisms. He can't see her as anything but a sweet little girl who needs his protection, anything that doesn't fit in with that story in his mind would immediately be rejected, even when the evidence is standing right in front of him, dripping in walker guts. "Daddy will come around," Beth says firmly, "He'll understand. Rick and Daryl and Shane—"

Maggie cut her off with an abrupt and passionless, "Shane's gone."

It took Beth a good three seconds to be sure that Maggie had really said it. "Gone? What do you mean, gone?" _Gone can be anything_.

"He took off in the night, with Andrea."

Whipping her head around to look at the top of the RV, Beth realizes that the shape she'd thought was Shane on watch was actually just a shadowy collection of blankets and hat hanging off the chair next to a foolishly unmanned shotgun. "Took off, like, on a run?" she asks hopefully, because _it doesn't make sense_. Why would Shane and Andrea run away together? What had been different this time?

"No, like, _gone_ ," Maggie brushes the tears out from under her eyes fiercely and gives a shrug, "Glenn says he's not surprised. Andrea's been in a bad place since she lost her sister and Shane's been a little strange ever since Rick turned up. They don't wanna be a part of the group."

 _Our group._ Beth's feels a sudden weight pushing her towards the dirt. "I gotta fix this," she murmurs, starting to head towards the RV and the camp Rick and the others put together.

"Beth— _what_?" Maggie appears beside her, "It's rough for them, I get that, but it ain't our affair and the other's will probably be gone as soon as Carl is well enough anyway—"

"No, they won't," Beth says sharply and she doesn't have time to hold her tongue or to try and come up with a clever way to work around Maggie's argument.

For whatever reason Maggie doesn't answer back to her, which makes Beth feel worse. They've both got to be pretty emotionally raw right now, if they're even past bantering for the hell of it, then they're in bad territory indeed.

T-Dog, Carol, Lori, Glenn and Dale are all up and standing together on the other side of the RV, each one looking as grave as Beth has ever seen them, in either life. They haven't mastered how to be hard and stoic yet, how to make it look like it doesn't bother them.

"Beth, Maggie, _what_ is going on?" T-Dog is the first to notice them.

Dale looks particularly stricken, but if his mind is on his missing friends he tries to hide it by indicating the house with a wide glance and one tired hand. "Daryl has quite the temper, but I've _never_ seen him like that."

"Daryl came and got Rick before the crack of dawn this morning and took him up to the house to speak with your father—when I tried to get…" Lori trails off, eyes darting between the sisters.

 _Oh no. Carol._

Looking at her, it's clear she doesn't know yet. Daryl didn't say anything to her. Beth finds that she isn't she sure can say anything either. It's got to happen, but not now and not like this. _Tender. Soft. Bring her into this horror gently._ It sounded insane when she thought about it like that. How was it even possible to be anything but brutal in these times?

"It's complicated," Maggie manages to croak. Her puffy eyes and shaking voice must provoke just the right amount of sympathy, because although both Dale and Lori look like they want to demand answers, their faces soften.

"Y'alright?" T-Dog's brow wrinkles in concern, and though something in his eyes says that he's still itching for answers, his shoulders relax a little, like he realizes that this might somehow be harder for the sisters than it is for the rest of them.

"We'll explain it all. It's over, that's the main thing," says Beth. _It ain't ever really over._ Daryl's harsh—but utterly true—words come back to her like a shot to the gut. She can't help but look at Carol again. "We can't lose Andrea and Shane. We gotta find 'em and get them to come back."

Everyone but Maggie looks shocked to hear her say it. Maggie only looks possibly more exhausted and depressed than she already did.

"Well— _yeah,_ I agree!" says Dale, "But—" he stutters over his objection, face getting redder, until T-Dog cuts him off.

"We can't stop it," T-Dog shrugs, frowning at her, "We can't force them to stick around if they ain't willing to be a part of this. Gotta let them go."

"I don't mean drag them back in Shane's handcuffs—I mean _talk_ to them. Dale, you could reason with Andrea, don't you think?" Beth asks hopefully. "If we could find them. Find out what the problem is—because—" Beth stutters over her own explanation for a moment too, as Lori's face goes pink. "We _need_ people. All of us. We gotta stick together, that's how it works now." _Oh hell, they're all looking at me like I'm crazy._ Her heart sinks. It's only been two days. They aren't her family yet. They don't know her. They don't know this world. They don't _know_. "There are people. They're close. They might be a threat—hopefully not, but, you can't just go off on your own like that. Somethin' could happen to them!" _Like one of them could end up kidnapped and forced into servitude by crazy cops._

For whatever reason T-Dog decides to help her out, even after a quick glance around at the group that must tell him that no one else is buying this. "You really think something bad could happen to them, out on the road, by themselves?"

"Don't you?" Beth holds out her hands, palms up, ready to start begging. "I'll go on my own, if I have to, but that's a fast way to get yourself hurt."

"Beth—I ain't gonna let you—" Maggie shaking her head.

"No," Beth anticipates what Maggie's going to say, but it shouldn't be her who goes. "Daddy's gonna need you." _And he won't wanna talk to me._ But she has to acknowledge in the same thought that it might be more accurate the other way around. She isn't sure she can face him right away. "I'm going. Are any of you coming with me?"

Dale nods almost immediately, looking grim, "I can't promise anything. Andrea doesn't listen to me much these days."

"I'll come too," T-Dog follows almost immediately.

Glenn looks like he's about to volunteer as well, but his mouth closes the second Beth meets his eyes. She cocks her head towards Maggie and he gives her a small, almost imperceptible nod, though his brow furrows a little, like he is somewhat doubting the silent message he received from her. They aren't very good at this yet, but all the same, Maggie will need a shoulder of support. Her dad and the rest of his people will be grieving.

"Alright, let's go quick. Hopefully we'll be able to catch them before they hit any roads where they've actually got real options…" every second they stand here lets Andrea and Shane get further away.

T-Dog heads for the truck at a jog, already fishing in his pocket for the keys. By the time Dale grabs a couple of guns T-Dog has brought the truck around.

Before Beth climbs inside, she pulls Maggie away from the others. "Listen, one of the walkers in the barn was Sophia. I think Lori would probably be the best person to tell Carol, and—and help her." Beth watches Maggie's face contort even more with grief as she speaks. _Nope. It was never going to be easy, any way it happened._ "She might wanna see her. She might not. I tried to clean her up as best I could and make her look peaceful."

* * *

For a few minutes of half-marching, half-sleepwalking, Daryl manages to get through his task without speaking more than a few sentences. He hates how he feels compelled to follow through for that girl after what had happened, after she'd sucker-punched him with Sophia like that. How long did she know Sophia was in there?

"Daryl?" Dale pokes his head out of his tent as Daryl strides past.

He must be making more noise than he realized. Dale looks like he's about to start talkin', sticking his nose in where it don't belong. "Stay out of it," Daryl grumbles, warning him with a sideways look. He can't see the man's blurry reaction in the dark but the old man goes quiet.

Daryl futilely thinks about trying to wake Rick up and get him out of his tent without disturbing Lori, but he's already being louder than he meant to. Stealth comes easily to him in the dark, except, apparently, after he's just taken a few too many hits. "Rick. We gotta talk to Hershel." He kicks the man's boot. Lori wakes up first.

"Daryl? What's going on?" Lori rubs tenderly at Rick's shoulder to wake him up. Even if it takes a minute to work, once Rick is awake his eyes are snap open, and he's fully alert. He immediately starts to stand up.

"Is it Carl?" Lori presses him when he ignores her first question.

"Get up." Growls Daryl, impatient. He can see that Rick's moving as fast as he can.

" _Daryl_ ," Lori is getting mad now at being ignored, "What's the problem?!"

Daryl leaves the tent, the paper in his pocket burns. One disaster at a time. But he oughta give it to someone. _Andrea and Shane are gone._ Which he's starting to think means they're as good as dead.

Through the door of the tent Rick pulls his pants and boots on, pretending like he can't hear his affronted wife.

A shadow lingers on his left. It's Dale, awake but silent, he peers at Daryl in the dark.

"Here," Daryl turns to him and digs into his pocket, advancing in quick.

Dale flinches, perhaps he didn't even realize that Daryl was aware of him creeping nearby.

Daryl grabs a hold of Dale's hand and shoves the paper roughly into his palm. "You deal with that." He stomps away from him, rolling his shoulders, but he can't kick the shivers. His heart's still firing wildly, his blood is still so strangely hot and ice-cold at the same time.

Rick meets Daryl partway back the house. Daryl is pacing restlessly, starts marching right away up the porch. "Looks like Shane and Andrea took off. I tried to get him first, but his car's gone and I found a note from Andrea wishing us the best of luck." Daryl can't even take in Rick's reaction. He moves on to the more important point, "That ain't the worst problem we got though. The farmer is nuts. He thinks the walkers are just sick people. He had the barn full of 'em. Over a dozen, including his wife and son."

"Had?" Rick's astute enough to catch that.

 _"Had."_ Daryl confirms and Rick swears, but he barely gets a few words into his diatribe about how they needed to show Hershel more respect and how Daryl really fucked this up when he stops abruptly. Rubbing the gruff on his face. One glance tells Daryl what's just happened.

Rick's figured out just how urgent it is that they talk to him. "We'll talk more about this later—we are not done." Rick warns him.

Daryl doesn't even have the presence of mind to realize right away that he's left Beth out of the explanation entirely. He didn't mentioned her. That would've taken more words and Daryl doesn't much feel like speaking, or maybe it's crazier than that, maybe he already senses what he's going to have to do.

 _"He'll think I murdered my mama."_ He can still picture her face perfectly, in all its china doll glory. She looked so vulnerable, so soft. Not at all the killer she is, for just an instant he's reminded how young she was, just a dumb kid in high school, who's lost her mom. The tightness in his chest chokes all other words before they can come out of him. He'll bring up her involvement when he has to.

He stays as silent as possible as Hershel meets them in his study. The Farmer is already awake. Rising before dawn isn't too unusual for a farmer, but Hershel's more hard core than that. He's fully awake. Dressed and eyes wide open. He doesn't even smell like coffee, just black tea. Rick starts to explain and Daryl looks at the ground.

"Hershel, we've got to talk about the walkers."

Hershel blinks at the word and Daryl realizes he's done that almost every time he hears them say it. All the same, he probably wouldn't have guessed what the issue was.

"I know… you hold out hope that there's a cure."

"Don't we all?" Hershel says, and his voice is still warm, because he doesn't know yet. "This plague is like any other before. There _is_ a cure, it just has to be found."

"I hope you're right," says Rick and the emotional in his voice in genuine, Daryl realizes. He's never really allowed himself to hope for a cure. Seems like asking for miracles doesn't get you very far, but he can hear in Rick's voice that the man really does hope for it, when he lets himself, but as soon as that hope is audible it dies out with his next, carefully chosen words, "but even so, it can't bring back the ones who are already gone."

Hershel nods gravely, at first seemingly unaware of what they're saying, then his gaze goes narrow, like he's just seen some sign that makes him suspicious, "I don't think anyone would doubt that."

"The walkers… they're already lost. You understand? They're dead already."

Hershel's expression goes from cautious to hard, his jaw sets as he surveys Rick, and suddenly it's just the two of them, staring each other down, Daryl might as well not even be in the room.

"I heard all that nonsense on the television. It's just _fear._ " He cringes at the disbelief in Rick's responding scoff, "They're still people—it's just like any other plague in history. Anything we don't understand. People get scared. They don't understand. They make the afflicted into monsters."

"No, Hershel that's not—" Rick falters, struggling to explain beyond just the obvious.

"One of 'em came at the camp," Daryl finally parts his lips and dares to speak, "The others tried to fight it off, ended up taking its head away. It was still snapping, still hungry, 'til I put a bolt through its brain. It's the only way to get them to stop." He glances up in time to see Hershel still looking unmoved, if mildly disturbed.

"You might think you saw a lot of things," he rationalizes in a growl, "Decapitation doesn't always make for immediate death. Takes a few seconds, they say."

"He was _long_ dead," Rick says, voice going quiet and jagged at the same time, though he shoots Daryl a grateful glance, even if it didn't work, they've got some idea now of how to prove it to him, he's gotta see that they're dead for himself. "Way before the head came off, way before Daryl put a bolt through him—"

"—Does that make it easier?" Hershel's voice rises to a shout, "Does that make you feel better? To think that way, before you murder them?"

"It ain't murder. It's _mercy_ —you gotta put 'em down, can't let them go on like that, eating their own, not remembering who they were." Rick pleads with him, but Hershel ain't getting it.

"You're lying to yourself," Daryl says suddenly, shaking his head, "Conditions in that barn ain't enough to keep a person properly alive. You gotta realize that. You studied medicine. You're just lying to yourself."

They're both silent now and staring at him. _I mentioned the barn, maybe it was too early for that…_ Rick has gone pale, like he's not sure how to proceed now that Daryl brought that up. Hershel, on the other hand, seems to be frozen in rage, his mouth twitches before he says, in a deceptively calm voice, "The barn? What do you know about the barn?"

 _Shit._ The stare Hershel gives Daryl tells him that he's about half a beat from being shot dead on the spot. "That's not life. That's rotting corpses in a box."

"That's my _wife_ and my _son_ —"

"They _were_. Now they're dead." Daryl shifts his weight, already scanning the exits, more out of anxiety than out of real fear.

"We've all lost people," Rick tries to soothe him too late.

Hershel has switched his focus to Daryl now, like he can sense exactly what he's not saying. "How'd you find out about the barn?"

 _Your batshit daughter._ But the fury in Hershel's eyes gives him pause, and the tremor in her voice when she pleaded with him to talk to her daddy. _Why'd she think her daddy'd listen to me any better?_ The girl doesn't need an ambassador. She needs a patsy. All at once Daryl understands, he's not here to explain, not really. He's here to take the fall. Of course, it's his choice, in the end. He could just tell the truth, or he could make this real easy for the girl, and real hard on himself.

Somehow already able to tell how this will end up, Daryl doesn't care. He doesn't owe the girl any favors, but there's no particularly compelling reason to stick around, 'specially now that they know exactly what happened to Sophia. "When I came back from lookin' for Sophia, I passed near the barn. I heard _them_. Growling. Restless inside. I climbed up to see for myself and figured out what you were doin'. Came back, after dark, and took care of it… found Sophia among them," he added, glancing at Rick.

Rendered speechless, Hershel starts to fall back into his desk chair, one hand cupping his forehead, trying in vain to hold his own head up as his body deflates on itself, wrecked. "You _killed._ All of them?"

"They were already dead," Daryl says again, this time through his teeth. The old man has got to get this.

"My wife—my son, even that little girl?" His voice rises up again, getting wet, "I didn't have any idea she was in there, _even when you saw that little girl was in there_ —you _killed_ them?"

"I finished it," Daryl ignores Rick's hand on his shoulder, trying in vain to lead him out.

"C'mon, this ain't right—I'll talk to him, you shouldn't even be here," Rick mutters.

Daryl rips his arm out of Rick's grip and steps forward to the desk, getting right in the grieving farmer's face, "You gotta snap outta this—your daughters need you, your people need you. There ain't no cure that can fix _dead_! A bullet or a bolt or a blade to the head _is_ the cure!"

"GET OUT!" Hershel's fist connected with the top of his desk with more force than it seemed the old man should be capable of. "I want you _off_ my farm!"

"Hershel let me—" but whatever Rick is asking permission to do, he gets cut off by Daryl's quick acquiescence.

"Nah, he's right! I don't belong here. You even think that yourself," Daryl faces Rick sharply, "I broke his rules. Ain't got no respect. Y'all don't need me." His heart beats even faster than when Beth threw her arms around him unexpectedly, faster than when he'd first smelled what was hiding in the barn. He's colder than when he'd put Sophia down. "I don't need you. Do just fine on my own."

The sun is almost up when Daryl's boots hit the top step of the front porch. He hears Rick calling out to him, but doesn't stick around to see if he'll come try and stop him. He still needs to fix this with Hershel, but he might come looking for Daryl later.

It won't matter. Daryl will be gone by full dawn.

* * *

 **I'm really sorry that my updates have been coming in so slowly! I wish I could say that there is some foreseeable designated writing time in my near future, but actually everything is getting MORE crazy as Iheadbacktoschoolyay :D I'm still going to make it a goal to update regularly. I want to say a big thank you to everyone who's reading and giving feedback! I'm sorry I wasn't able to reply to all your reviews last time, but just know that I love you guys and I so love the encouragement and I always try to take constructive criticism into account, so never feel like you can't offer feedback, I always appreciate it!**

 **It's Only - ODESZA**


	6. Ch VI - Do They Baptize For The Dead?

"What should I be looking for?" T-Dog manages to ask the question without sounding too annoyed or doubtful about the mission. Even as he speaks, he seems to be keeping his eyes peeled on the horizon.

"Any sign of them at all, I suppose," Dale sounds calm, but Beth can see the worry in his eyes. "Maybe they'd go into town first, to look for supplies?"

There are only a few roads they could've taken. "Either way, they'll probably end up on the highway before long. Maybe we should try and head 'em off." Beth tries to estimate how far they could've made it.

"You know the area," T-Dog cocks his head at the road.

"Yeah. I'll tell you where to go, just keep straight for now."

"Right."

"There ain't no speed limit anymore," Beth resists the urge to smirk as T-Dog puts on the gas.

"Usually I'd argue with you about that, but under the circumstances… just be careful," Dale advises, "I imagine slamming into a herd of those things would ruin the car, not to mention, cost us our lives."

Beth keeps watching the horizon, she leans over Dale to get the passenger side window and roll it down, just enough that she can listen for another engine on the road outside.

To recall the last time she'd sat in the middle seat of this truck with T-Dog driving was all too painful. She'd been sandwiched between Lori and T-Dog, rather than Dale and T-dog, while they fled from the farm, the fire still hot at their backs. The spatter of Patricia's blood stained her clothes in little flecks, the scent of fire and blood pungent around her. They left the farm, and the dead together. Flames drove them away from her home. T-Dog, Lori, Dale… She'd outlived all of them in that other life, and now she had a chance to save them. Maybe even make sure they were never driven off this farm in the first place.

She doesn't know how it's all going to work yet. She has some vague plans. They need to build a wall, that's for sure. Maybe they can get some heavy-duty construction equipment from somewhere, and rip up the school and other nearby buildings for concrete blocks and other sturdy materials. They can create a huge rock-wall perimeter around her dad's property; it needs to be better than the prison. The dead had eventually broken through the fence. They need to build the Great Wall of China.

A moat wasn't a bad idea either. She'd been thinking about that last night at dinner. A dry moat, lined with walker-traps, just outside this hypothetical better-than-a-shitty-chain-link-enclosure wall.

If they get to work on it right away, could they have enough of it ready that they don't have to abandon the farm when the walkers come?

There had been so many of them. She wasn't even sure how many. It looked like they just kept coming, as far as the horizon allowed her to see.

It's worth a shot, but she can't do it alone. She needs everybody else to be in on this plan, especially the ones people look to and listen to. Rick, of course, Shane as long as they can catch him and as long as this stunt doesn't make anyone turn against him. They would listen to her daddy too…

Unfortunately, she has a feeling her daddy is going to be the hardest one to convince, even if Daryl and the others do manage to help him understand the true nature of the walkers.

So much of this plan relies on working together, and on working hard.

They need Shane and Andrea. She doesn't want to lose either of them, especially not earlier than they were ever supposed to. Mile after mile peals by on the road out the window, but they don't see any sign of them. No rubber burnt on the road, no rumbling engine echoing from the turns up ahead, it's all silent and tranquil. The world is a tomb.

Beth is just starting to panic that they've really managed to lose them, when they come upon that stretch of road where they lost Sophia. The message to her is still bright on the windshield of the old mustang. Shane and Andrea are loading the supplies they'd left for her on the hood of the car into a duffle bag. From a distance, they haven't seen them, but as they get closer, Shane's rounded shoulders poke up from above a car. He scratches at his dark hair, agitated. He must've seen who it was.

Andrea's blonde ponytail takes another minute to come up from behind the mustang. She's slow to move, arms already crossed, apparently reluctant to even hear them out.

"I wonder if they would've just come back on their own, once they saw that Fort Benning was a bust," Dale grumbles, "Maybe they just needed some time away to understand why we're better when we stick together."

T-Dog climbs out of the car first and Beth topples out after him, feet hitting the asphalt hard.

"C'mon," T-Dog reaches across the front seat and encourages Dale with a little nudge against his shoulder.

Dale wears a hard frown on his face. He never looks tired, Beth can't help but notice that sometimes her father just looks exhausted, like life has taken it all out of him. Dale never seems to tire, but all the same, he's slow to climb down, apparently having second thoughts about whether or not this will help or hurt the situation. Maybe he's right. Maybe Shane and Andrea would've made their way back in a day or two.

"Alright, is this gonna go faster if I let y'all speak your peace and then we'll shove off just like we planned?" Shane meets them halfway, muscular arms perched on either of his hips, and head cocked at them, a mildly disdainful smirk on his lips. He looks at Dale, though both Beth and T-Dog are several steps in front of him.

T-Dog shrugs before he speaks, face a little steely, "Honestly man, I wanna hear your list of compelling reasons to take off," he shrugs again, "If you've got good ones than maybe I'll split too."

Beth's knee-jerk reaction is to protest, but there is something about T-Dog's demeanor that gives her pause, he isn't really offering himself as a third companion, he's forcing Shane to think. "I mean, what? You don't trust the farmer?" T-Dog glances back at Beth, pointedly looking her up and down, "You don't trust Rick's leadership? Maybe you're bugged that Rick _is_ the leader, I mean the guy just shows up and he's your same rank, but there's an automatic de facto promotion in coming back from the dead? Right?" T-Dog rubs at the back of his head, in a gesture that Beth has come to associate with Shane, then lets his hand fall against his thigh with a smack, "You really think Fort Benning offers something worth having? You think you'll have less responsibility if it's just the two of you? Better chance of survival? More _alone_ time?"

Shane nods without listening. Beth can tell by the way his eyes are unfocused, still flickering more in Dale's direction, he doesn't want to hear it. Won't believe what T-Dog says. They've got to _make_ him hear it.

"You're going to die." Beth decides it's time to speak. If any of what T-Dog says has gotten through, then Shane will be trying to avoid the thought.

Looking up at her sharply, all Shane's little fidgeting movements quit in an instant and he's frozen, eyes cold on her face, but she doesn't flinch or look away.

"You're gonna die. But first, you'll get _her_ killed." Beth only looks away from Shane's fierce gaze long enough to indicate where Andrea still hung back, shoulder turned towards them, face fixed in the opposite direction. "Thing's ain't like how they've ever been, and if you would _think_ for a single second, you'd realize that. You'd figure out that this world is all about eating you up. People need each other now. When we get separated, we get killed. Just like Sophia, just like the people I lost and the people _you lost_. We're here 'cause lettin' you and Andrea leave is the same as letting you die. It's stupid. Being stupid gets you dead." That's all she has, and it's the utter truth. She can't make them stay, but she hopes it will be enough to fix the mistake she's somehow made. She doesn't understand why Shane and Andrea left, but it _must_ have something to do with what she changed, because last time, they stuck around.

Shane seems to have been paying a little more attention to Beth, but his eyes still expectantly swiveled over to Dale, lingering behind them.

"I don't have anything to say to you," says Dale coolly. "I came to talk to her." They all know he means Andrea, but he doesn't make a move to approach her yet.

Unsuccessfully trying to hide a smirk, Shane shrugs and steps aside. "Go ahead and talk to her."

Dale slowly makes his way passed all of them and approaches Andrea as if he were approaching a wild animal, libel to bolt.

"C'mon," Shane cocks his head towards the other end of the road, "Dale's got a set of lungs on him, we might be here awhile. Might as well give you that shooting lesson you wanted."

They don't speak much as Shane stacks up an assortment of miscellaneous items from inside the various abandoned cars along the roofs of several cars in their line of sight down the road.

T-Dog takes a post half-way between both groups, probably so he can easily get the attention of either in case he sees something.

"You'll find if you exhale as you pull the trigger, it'll be easier to keep it steady," Shane nods as he checks her stance, leaning to the side a little to make sure she's not arching her back too far.

Beth pulverizes the empty soda can perched on the first car. The bullet gives a hiss as the can flies off the car and gently floats back down.

"Good!" says Shane and he actually does sound excited. "Real good. You got nice control of the kick too… here, let's try somethin'," he swings the nearest car door open and digs around in the cup-holding, coming back with a penny. "Try and kill the side-view mirror on that truck there, without making the penny drop." He sets it on top of the barrel of the gun.

He's picked a closer target so she can be less stressed about hitting the actual target and more stressed about whether or not the Penny falls. She exhales, just like he told her too, and just like he showed her the first time she learned to shoot, but her hand's not quite steady enough to completely avoid the kick. The penny chimes in a high-pitched whine on the asphalt, though the mirror is just a shattered memory.

"I think that's what we'll have you work on, for now."

"And later?" she asks, trying not to let her voice get too hopeful.

"You can't predict that?" Shane raises an eyebrow at her.

It takes her a moment to realize that he's being serious. She lowers the gun and surveys him carefully, trying to work out if he's really getting at what she thinks he's getting at.

"There was a man in our group, died just a few days ago. Thing is, right before the attack when he got bit, he was acting real strange. Turns out, he'd had a dream, the night before, about all of it. He saw our people dropping, swarmed by those things." Shane sniffs and checks the landscape with a quick brush of his eyes, as if nervous someone might hear him. "I ain't usually the type of guy who'd pay any mind, but the fact is, the dead are rising from the ground. The world is all kinds of screw up right now, and I'd say I'm more willing than ever to believe that some people might have…" he cringes, clearly not able to bring himself to allude to psychic powers in any kind of direct way, "warnings." He finally finishes his thought. Still not quite able to own it, he scoffs.

"It's kinda like that, yeah," Beth can't tell him. He'd think she is crazy, not to mention he'd probably tell her dad, if he does come back, which she hopes he will. "How'd you guess that?"

"Ah, hell girl," Shane snorted, "I saw your face when you walked into the living room and tossed that stuff down, the _exact_ equipment we happened to need to save Carl's life? I mean, I believe in luck, but either that was a bonafide miracle, which is a little tougher to chew, or you're like him. Like Jim."

Beth knows she's gotta own this. It might be the only way to convince him to come back.

"Thing is, if you really knew the future, then it wouldn't matter whether I came with you or came back. You saw me die, so I'm dead right?" He tries to hide the nervousness through another veil of male bravado, chuckling and a crooked smile, but he can't quite manage it. Some part of him is legitimately scared. "So why not die on my own terms?"

"Your terms are to run away and abandon your friends? You wanna die alone out there, getting someone else killed too?" Beth takes aim at another side-view mirror, further off this time and squeezes the trigger.

"That what you see?" Shane leans in to look at her close, hovering above her eye-level.

Beth takes out two more mirrors before she answers, she's still got seven bullets in the clip. But she doesn't want to waste more than she needs on practice. Just enough to convince him that she's competent with a gun. "I don't see you dying Shane. I didn't have some revelatory dream like your friend. I just _know_. If you leave, you'll die. If you stay, _maybe_ you'll live." The dark thought that she's lying crawls across her mind. She doesn't know he'd for sure die out there on his own. It just felt so likely that she had to say it.

"But you did know about Carl, before it happened?" His eyebrows raise slightly as he glances over at the shattered empty eye-socket where all those mirrors once were.

"Yeah. I knew that before. I saw it happen. I knew he needed that stuff."

Shane nods, looking pensive for a long time at the stretch of road. When he finally does speak again, the hushed secretive voice that he's adopted during their conversation falls away and he sounds relaxed, nearly bored as he states simple and clean, "We'll have to work on moving targets next time."

There is going to be a next time. She's won.

Convincing Andrea is actually harder. Once they tell her that Shane is going back, she nearly weeps right then and there. Beth can see it in her face, she's furious with him and furious with all of them for coming after her, nearly to the point that tears are threatening to fall. She won't even look at Dale. Their little two-car caravan goes back down the road towards the farm again, and Beth finally lets exhaustion overwhelm her. When is the last time she properly slept? Not since she'd come back in time, surely. Before that, she slept poorly or not-at-all while she was in Grady.

The last good sleep she'd had was in the funeral home, she realizes. Daryl had been utterly serious about sleeping in the coffin, until Beth had said that she wanted to sleep in the queen upstairs. Daryl had followed her, at first just offering to stand sentinel outside her door, but they never have a watch schedule between them before, and they'd been sleeping very close. It was the only thing that made sense. She didn't want that to change just because they had four walls and a roof. They had the alarms set up, the house was old and creaked with slight changes in pressure. It would be hard to sneak up on them, especially on the second floor. Better to stay close. Daryl saw it her way fast enough, but wouldn't take his boots off. The man couldn't lay his weapons down. He wasn't ready for that yet. She left hers on too, just in case they had to run.

But she felt utterly safe, lying next to Daryl Dixon in that bed. Boots knocking in only the very most chaste and literal sense. _Maybe tomorrow night we'll feel alright to let our guard down. Maybe that tension all through his shoulders and my back will loosen and I'll fold myself right into his chest and feel that heartbeat up close._ They wouldn't have to run again, or so she thought. They could stay there for the rest of their lives. She could sleep there. With him.

Now she sleeps, not because she feels safe, but just because the car is hot, the static grumble of the engine and the wheels against the road is soothing. T-Dog is out in a matter of seconds with his head propped up against the window, leaving his shoulder open for use. She sleeps for all of twenty minutes before the last turn towards their property wakes her up.

Rick and Glenn come out to meet them. The air is thick with tension. Andrea doesn't stay to talk but marches into the house, eyes pointed straight ahead and furious. Shane looks directly at everyone but Rick, then swears under his breath and turns to unpack his car.

"We might need to hold… a meeting," Dale says lamely, looking between Shane and the front door of them house, where Andrea disappeared. "I think there are some issues that could stand to be discussed."

Rick nods, though the grimace on his lips tells Beth he'd rather have all his teeth pulled out than hold a meeting to talk about their feelings. "Yeah, we probably do. Hershel isn't willing to listen to any more right now," Rick turns his attention to Beth, looking even more grim, "I don't know how much longer he'll let _any_ of us stay." He shakes his head.

Beth's heart drops, "He didn't threaten to make you leave?"

"Not in so many words," Rick swallows, "But he kicked Daryl off the property early this morning. He went too far. The barn. Do—you know?" Rick falters over his last few words, eyes hard on Beth.

It takes Beth a good five seconds to fully process what Rick just said. Then it hits her. He doesn't know she was in the barn killing them. Which means Daryl didn't say anything about her. He pretended to act alone. "He _kicked_ Daryl off?!"

"Can't say I blame him," Rick's hands in fists on either side of him suggest he's not at all at peace with this.

"I sure as hell can," Beth breathes out, feeling dizzy, "When did he leave? Do you know which way he went?"

Alarmed, Rick's eyebrows arch at her, but he shakes his head. "He took off early, probably right after Shane and Andrea. If you didn't see any sign of him…" he trails off, "He's a tracker. I imagine he knows how to not be followed too, if he doesn't want to be followed."

 _Shit. Shit. SHIT!_ Beth turns on her heel and sprints towards the stables.

"Hey—where are you going?"

"After him!" She hears their protests, but only quickens her pace, to avoid being caught. They let her go, but she knows that someone will be going to the house to get her dad. Her stomach sinks thinking about facing him, but her heart pounds and sweat breaks out on her forehead as she imagines what could happen to Daryl.

 _Why didn't I think this through?_ She swallows the lump in her throat as she gets her horse Nelly ready for a ride, fast as she can. Nelly gets nervous and can sense Beth's anxiety, but she hasn't thrown her yet, Beth knows how to steady herself even when she's in absolute turmoil. By the time she's able to mount the horse, everyone has caught up to her.

She heard them converging on the stables as she worked, heard her father's voice even, but she didn't stop. As she rides out of the stable, Beth nearly colliding right into Glenn and Maggie before the horse rears up and takes an anxious series of steps to the side. "Easy," Beth soothes her horse.

"Beth— _what_ are you doing, get down! Get inside the house now!" Hershel's face is bloodless already, he's been through hell this morning.

Her throat's all tied up and for a moment she loses her resolve to confess before she goes, but it's the right thing to do. They've gotta understand. "I'm going after Daryl. We need him."

"Honey, let's talk about this," but he's still using his firm voice, still walking towards the side of the saddle, however cautiously, like he think he's going to pull her off and drag her into the house.

"I went after Shane and Andrea and now I'm going after Daryl and _none of you get it._ " Her frustration starts to mount, momentarily helping her forget her guilt and grief. "What do you think people are like now? What do you think _this_ did to them?" Luckily, it seems that both she and Nelly are united in their desire not to let Hershel get near. The touchy horse circles around the old man rather then let him so much as touch the saddle or her rider. "There are still good people, but the good people have to stick together. You go off on your own, you die. I'm not letting Daryl die."

"You don't understand what he _did_ ," Hershel's voice breaks as he starts to take on a tone she can't stand, a tone like he's _begging_.

"Daryl only helped _me_ kill them!" Beth finally blurts out. Maggie's got her face buried in Glenn's shoulder rather than look at her father right now and Beth wishes she could look away too, as the rest of it spills out. "I went into the barn alone to put them down. I couldn't do it," her voice cracks, but she pushes through it. "I dragged Daryl out of bed so he could help me finish it."

Hershel's knee weaken beneath him as his face collapses into his hands. He shudders under the weight of what she just told him, but tilts his head back to look at her, he can barely stand to do it for more than a second before his face falls again.

She's just stabbed her own father right in his already shattered heart, and part of her wants to break down rather than keep going. "I've gotta get Daryl back. Because he's a good man. Because he's gonna save all your lives." _Because I can't lose him again_. Beth pulls Nelly onward, urging her to quicken to a gallop as quickly as possible. The rest of the group part around her.

* * *

 **Okay, so now the butterfly effect stuff is really starting to kick in. There is still going to be correlation between S2/S3 events and what I've got planned, but keep in mind that this is officially a different universe. She's changed too much now. Thank you all SO MUCH for your love and encouragement! I'm so overwhelmed because you guys are SO SWEET!**

 **Law school is very much my life right now, and I'm pretty swamped, but I'm trying to take frequent healthy breaks for writing fic. You know. For sanity. I apologize for the delay between updates in the mean time.**

 **Shattered & Hollow - First Aid Kit**


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